


Pity Party

by scarii



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character death (but it's only Wade), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Peter Parker is a sad nerd, vague plot is vague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-12-26 21:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18290711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarii/pseuds/scarii
Summary: “You can’t die,” Peter says, like the idiot that he is. “I mean, you die all the time and come back from it. That’s even more fucked up.”“Keep your eyes peeled for my autobiography, Spidey. New York Times bestselling author Wade Wilson presents:Even More Fucked Up, the story of a Merc with a Mouth and a Dream and a Whole Lot of Guns.”“I’d definitely read the Wikipedia summary, at least.”*Eight meetings between Spider-Man and Deadpool, in alleyways and on rooftops and in warehouses.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this fic before I saw _Into the Spiderverse_ and then proceeded to sit on it for four months. That being said, I did have a sad, older Peter in mind the whole time and if you want to read this as 37 year-old divorcee dad bod Peter, it would work pretty well, even though none of the events of the movie are mentioned.
> 
> This is set in a universe composed of vague question marks and Peter and Wade are both vague characterizations that I threw together based on various comics, movies and cartoons.
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [neverbirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverbirds/profile), even though she doesn't care about sad idiots in spandex, and the lovely Megawatts, who does.

**i.**

Peter has never considered himself a very patient person.

“Tell me what happened,” he says, using all of the authority he can muster. “Slowly. In as few words as possible”

There isn’t a good time of day to run into a mercenary, but something in the air at 3 in the morning makes it feel like the worst. Peter is tired. He’s been chasing around after lowlives and idiots in costumes for hours and it feels like they were all just leading up to this encounter. 

Deadpool is looking at Spider-Man from across the alley, with bullet holes sprinkled across his suit and one bloody arm hanging limply at his side. There are two bodies painted across the pavement and he had a third guy pinned against the brick wall with his good elbow, until Peter swung down onto the scene and webbed him out of reach. The guy sits in the corner, struggling and grunting against the webbing but still alive. Peter stares Deadpool down.

“Um,” Deadpool looks down at the gun in his hand, then back at Spider-Man, then at the bodies on the ground, then back to the gun. “They started it?”

“Wrong answer,” Peter says, kicking Deadpool sharply in his pockmarked chest. It causes Deadpool’s back to slam into the concrete and he coughs spitty blood out of his mouth through his mask. It dribbles down onto the red of his suit.

“What’s the right answer?”

“I don’t know,” Peter says, approaching to dig his heel into Deadpool’s good arm as he tries to spin webbing around him. “Try ‘I didn’t do it.’”

“You want me to lie to you?”

“Then there are no right answers,” Peter says, pushing his foot into the muscle a little harder, hearing Deadpool wince, but not letting up. “Sorry. Thanks for playing.”

“I don’t like this game very much,” Deadpool says, trying to hop out of Peter’s reach, half tied-up with one arm pinned and the other broken, flailing pathetically next to him. “There are other games that are a lot more fun. Gin rummy? Go Fish?”

“I have it on authority that you cheat at cards.”

“Whose authority?”

“Wolverine’s,” Peter tells him, emptying an entire canister of webbing trying to incapacitate the mercenary. For the thug Deadpool had pinned, the wrists and the ankles seemed more than sufficient, but the man himself is starting to look like he’s spun up in a cocoon. Peter supposes you could call it overkill, but when Deadpool’s involved overkill doesn’t really exist.

“That isn’t very fair,” Deadpool says. “Wolverine also cheats at cards.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, wondering exactly what a card game between Logan and Deadpool looks like. How often they meet up, if they play for money or favors or weaponry, how many times they stab one another. “But he clearly cheats much better than you do, bub.”

“Everybody does,” Deadpool says, sounding more defeated than he had when Peter kicked him in the chest. “I’ve been told I’m not very subtle.”

Peter looks at him -- checkered in ridiculous shades of black and red, blood spurting out of him through the webbing he’s caught up in, adding to the graffiti colored walls, still trying to wiggle away from the hero -- and he laughs.

“That’s it, that’s the best joke you’ve ever told,” Peter says, wiping away a mock tear. Deadpool’s existence seems to really only amuse Peter when he isn’t trying to. The bit-off jokes and incessant chatter only do so much for Spider-Man, but then Deadpool gets his arm snapped in half and goes around looking like a two hundred pound puppy soaked in blood who’s really sorry he took a shit on the carpet and Peter’s lip twitches underneath the mask. He figures this reflects on him way more poorly than it does on Deadpool and decidedly ignores it.

“Spidey’s in a bad mood today,” Deadpool says, and Peter can hear him pouting. “Who pissed in your cheerios this morning?”

“Nobody pissed in my cereal, but someone did make bad guys bleed all over my city,” Peter tells him. “Taking out your trash isn’t exactly my favorite thing.”

Deadpool tilts his head a little to the side like a very confused very oversized fly that doesn't know how it ended up in this web.

“I would’ve cleaned up after myself,” he says.

“Not the point,” Peter tells him, rubbing his exhausted hand over his exhausted face.

“Then what is the point?” Deadpool asks him, finally tiring of his wiggling and leaning back against the brick wall of the alleyway so he can casually bleed all over it. “Like, you know I’m killing bad people here, right? Like  _ super  _ bad. Like I don’t even wanna tell you what they’re up to bad. And then you rock up, all knight in shining spandex, and throw me off my groove. What’s up with that? The A team and all the X-Men have the common decency to look the other way when I come to town.”

Peter doesn’t find it fair that the other heroes can just ignore when and where Deadpool guns down anonymous criminals in well-tailored suits with well-made weaponry. If Peter doesn’t actively stop Deadpool, he’s just as guilty. If you see something, say something, and all that.

Peter looks away from the criminals, dead or tied up, and reads the graffiti on the wall. One section reads  _ fuck cops  _ and then there’s a smiley face across the wall telling Peter that  _ mermaids are real. _

“That’s why I work alone,” Peter says. “I can’t get behind all that moral gray area.”

“So it’s not because you haven’t earned all your boy scout badges?”

“ _No_ , I just don’t like it when people kill people,” Peter says, sounding too much like Peter and not enough like Spider-Man.

“And I don’t think it’s right that other people let you get away with it,” he adds in his best superhero voice, probably not quickly enough.

“Of course they let me get away with it. I’m just a big ol’ bad guy garbage man. It’s convenient to have a dude who can’t die rolling around, doing some of the dirty work for you.”

There are so many things in the tone of his voice that Peter wants to pick apart. He wants to argue, so so badly, but he knows the Avengers’ collective body count is higher than he wants to know and he doesn’t even want to  _ think  _ about SHIELD. He doesn’t know why, why it’s so bad when Deadpool does it. Is it the money? Or is it just because Black Widow is better at keeping her mouth shut?

Deadpool looks up at him from the wall he’s perched against, curled up and smaller than he usually is. Peter sighs and leans against the dumpster across from him.

“That doesn’t make it right,” is what he finally says, trying not to feel like an after school special.

“So I’m guessing if the Avengers all jumped off a bridge, you wouldn’t?” Deadpool says, letting his head drop against the wall. He looks tired. Defeated.

“Is the bridge killing people? Because no. Obviously.”

“What if the bridge is saving people?”

“Then yes,” Peter tells him. “Obviously.”

“But what if by killing people you  _ are  _ saving people and that is the bridge?” Deadpool is tilting his chin down and Peter can feel his stare even if he can’t see it. The guy’s had his shit kicked in, so clearly a few steps away from blacking out due to blood loss, but he’s still putting so much energy into arguing with Spider-Man. “It’s a complicated bridge.”

“There is always a way that doesn’t involve killing. No bridge is that complicated.”

“Babe, you’re a New Yorker. Don’t tell me there are no complicated bridges.”

“I,” Peter says, swallowing the spit in his mouth, trying not to think about the George Washington Bridge or look at the unnatural, painful bend of Deadpool’s neck, “I guess you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” Deadpool says taking a deep breath of air, voice sounding rougher as he loses more blood, “except when I’m wrong.”

“Wise words,” Peter says, except his heart really isn’t in it, if it ever was, and he figures Deadpool’s heart probably won’t be in anything much longer. It feels invasive to watch another man die, even though he knows Deadpool wouldn’t mind if he stayed.

Slumped completely over onto the concrete, Wade shifts a bit, and Peter almost feels bad for how tightly he’s wrapped up.

“Yep,” Wade says to himself after a moment or two, taking loud exhalations in between words, “it sure is happening again.”

Deadpool’s inane chatter starts reducing entirely to whispering and mumbling and labored intakes of breath and Peter leaves. He doesn’t say anything to the mercenary as he goes, doesn’t tell him off or threaten him the way he usually does, because Aunt May and Uncle Ben raised him better than to kick a man while he’s down. The sun is starting to rise, and Peter thinks he can get a few hours of sleep in before he has to be at the Bugle in the morning.

When Peter is at home lying in bed, staring at the watermarked ceiling, he realizes he didn’t call the police. Deadpool is still lying tied up in an alley somewhere, with only some corpses and a struggling criminal for company. Peter’s phone is on his nightstand and he looks at it before rolling over and closing his eyes, wondering if Wade’s died yet.

**ii.**

New York has an erratic pulse to it that always moves too quickly and sometimes moves even quicker than that. It’s exhausting, even on its better days, and Spider-Man has seen it too many times on its worse. Peter doesn’t know how he grew up in Queens without the whole thing chewing him up and spitting him out. It’s tried way too many fucking times, he thinks, as he flicks out an arm and webs to the side of a building.

Today feels messier than usual. It’s not even the witching hour or anything, just 4 in the afternoon on a Sunday, and Peter’s already had to shut down two purse snatchers, a bank robbery and a poorly assembled car bomb. He’s feeling pretty fucking done with vigilantism by the time Hobgoblin joins the party, and Peter manages to web him up with a bow in record time before dumping him by the nearest police station.

He’s tired and he’s hungry and he has to go home and change so he can meet Aunt May for Sunday dinner and then work in the morning. His arms feel lined with lead and he can’t even be bothered to websling his way to back. His apartment is only a few blocks away anyway, and Peter knows the alleyways around the city too well.

Unsurprisingly, he’s not the only one who knows the backstreets of New York better than they should.

“Spidey! Is that you?” An eager voice rips out from around a dumpster behind a bodega. Peter groans to himself, because it’s like Deadpool knows exactly when and where Peter absolutely does not want to see him and makes sure to root himself in that place.

“Fuck, right,” the mercenary continues, “we’re supposed to be quiet. Nevermind! Don’t come over here. No Spider-Men allowed. Please and thank you!”

If Peter were a smart man he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and would just take the opportunity to walk away. He’s going to ignore it. He’s going to walk away.

“Wow, what on earth is that little sound?” he says, moving toward the dumpster.  _ Fuck _ .  _ Aunt May is going to be so mad if I’m late _ . “It’s so quiet and inconspicuous, but I swear I must have heard something... I sure hope my spidey senses aren’t failing on me.”

Peter finds Deadpool curled up against the brick wall, poorly shadowed by the dumpster next to him, holding an impossible amount of weaponry. He looks down at the other man, who’s started whistling Old Macdonald under his breath, and is endlessly pissed off at both Deadpool and himself.

“What the hell are you doing.”

“Woah, hey there,” Deadpool says, awkwardly rubbing the butt of one of his guns against the back of his head. “So crazy meeting you here like this, no clue how you found me.”

“Believe it or not, you make it pretty easy.”

“Only when I want to, Spidey, only when I want to,” Deadpool says, crouching a little bit further down. “But shh, we can’t flirt right now. You have to be quiet. I’m hiding."

Peter doesn’t even have the energy to call Deadpool out on his inane bullshit. He’s too busy finding it impossible that this man can be a contract killer, how he manages to put a bullet in anyone before they put one in him first. Well, he thinks, it’s not like with Wade it really matters who shoots who. Deadpool, even bloodsoaked and broken, always comes out on top.

“Hiding from what?” he asks with his hands on his hips, bent over Deadpool, trying to convey annoyance across every stitch of his suit.

“Y’know those bad guys from last time? With the guns and the alleyway and the shady, vague backstory? Well, it turns out they have some real bad friends and they’re real unhappy with me.”

“People? Unhappy? With you? I can’t believe it,” Peter says, taking another glance down at how ridiculous Deadpool looks. He looks like he’s prepping for some kind of disaster with more guns than Peter has time for this nonsense.

“Look, are there actually guys out to get you right now or what? Because you look like you’re trying to bring the fight to them, and I know you love playing the blame game but you should really--”

“Seriously, Spider-Man,” Wade cuts him off. “You have to shut it.”

Peter is so surprised by the sharp tone in Deadpool’s voice that the spider sense ringing in his brain barely gives him enough time to dodge the bullet speeding towards him. Deadpool is up in the blink of an eye, and the space is suddenly filled with a dozen men, all of them angry and armed.

It’s like a switch has gone off. Peter has seen Deadpool fight before, slicing down Doombots and shooting muggers in ankles, dismembering bad people doing bad things in bad areas. But he’s never seen him quite like this. Methodical, efficient in his movements. Quiet. Peter feels impossibly small in ways he hasn’t in years when Deadpool stands up, sending one bullet straight through two different skulls and running down the pavement towards a third. It’s Wade’s silence, Peter thinks, more than the bleeding bodies hitting the concrete that bothers him.

As Deadpool knocks another guy out with the butt of his gun, the other men start punching and shooting in earnest. Each bullet only slows Deadpool down for a fraction of a second. He shoots back towards a guy hidden behind a van, shattering its windows, sending glass everywhere. 

Peter figures someone is going to call the cops on them. Peter figures  _ he  _ should call the cops on them, and leave, and only be twenty minutes late to dinner. He watches Deadpool, still firing, move toward where he’s standing and swing his boot into the neck of an attacker who was starting to get too close to Spider-Man.

“Are you gonna help me or just stand around looking pretty?” Deadpool asks, a gun in one hand and a sword in another. His voice sounds so deep and his body isn’t pointed in Spider-Man’s direction when he talks.

“You,” Peter says, blinking owlishly behind his mask, “you seem to be doing an alright job.”

Deadpool grunts at him and puts a katana through someone’s eye socket. Spider-Man then decides he should probably do something to help reduce the body count of this situation instead of watching Deadpool artistically dismember gangsters. The act is all so fluid, hypnotic. Peter’s not really one to appreciate form, but when you’ve taught yourself everything you know about jumping and punching, you have to notice it when it’s done well.

The shooting and stabbing, though. That he should probably stop. He cracks his neck and webs the guns from two criminals’ hands, before landing a kick to one of their chests.

“About time,” Deadpool grinds out, inserting the sword into a man’s shoulder and pulling it out all in one smooth flick of the wrist. “We were worried we were scaring you.”

“All of the senseless violence and gratuitous bloodshed did have me a little distracted,” Peter says, punching the guy coming up behind Deadpool.

“As if you haven’t seen worse in your time, Spider-Prude.”

“Yeah, but it’s usually like alien guts or robot pieces, you know, all very reasonable cartoon violence. Less….people-y.” His spider sense goes off again and he ducks out of the way as a bullet smacks the brick of the wall behind him. Three more shots follow suit and Peter dances around them all.

“What is the deal with you guys anyway?” Spider-Man asks, turning to face the attackers. “Seems like you’re really  _ gunning  _ for us.”

“Yeah,” he hears Wade say softly to himself, “he does always go for the low-hanging fruit.”

“Sometimes the most obvious choice is the best one,” Peter says, webbing up another criminal. “Are they making more of these guys? Where are they all coming from?”

Deadpool seems to have snapped out of whatever strange trance he was in and starts aiming at ankles instead of eye sockets. He and Spider-Man maneuver around each other well enough and Peter doesn’t really like how they’re working together.

“The bad guys factory,” Deadpool says, “just down over on 65th.”

“Ugly building,” Spider-Man responds. “Not a fan.”

“All of the buildings in this town are ugly. I haven’t seen a tree in  _ weeks _ .”

“Jesus Christ,” one of the thugs says. “What, are you gonna go off about the weather too?”

“Yeah,” his buddy answers, “you tryna talk us to death?”

“If only I could,” Deadpool says, sighing a deep sigh, while Spider-Man wraps up the first guy. “There was one time I got a guy really close. Like, I had this scumlord all tied-up in a warehouse, and I wasn’t even supposed to kill him or anything, but he wouldn’t give up any information and I thought he would crack if I repeated the entire second season of Golden Girls to him verbatim, but I didn’t even make it to episode four before he started begging me to put a bullet in him.”

“What did you do?” Peter asks, regretting the words almost as quickly as they’re out of his mouth.

“Well, you know how I’m a gentleman and all, so I obliged.”

Peter groans. “I guess I shouldn’t expect any less from you, Wade.”

Deadpool has a guy up against the dumpster, knife digging into the soft part of the other man’s belly and he turns to look at Spider-Man for a split second. The guy takes advantage of the moment, pressing his gun into Wade’s wrist, just under his glove, and pulls the trigger. The flesh explodes, revealing muscle and tissue, leaving the appendage hanging onto its arm by a small sliver of skin. Wade grunts, taking his good hand to pull the knife out of the man’s gut and push it into his jugular.

“Ow,” Wade says as the man starts gurgling blood, falling to the pavement on his knees and clawing at the blade sticking out of his throat, “that hurt.”

“Are you serious?” Peter says, jaw falling open at the red fountain pouring from the guy’s larynx.

“He was being mean,” Deadpool says with a pout.

“Can’t you at least leave half of them alive, Deadpool?”

Deadpool looks at Spider-Man and then turns back to the remaining men in the alley, only four of them still hanging around, with the rest dead or incapacitated or fucked off.

“Spidey,” he says, using his good hand to shoot one of the remaining criminals in both shins, “I got this from here. You can go.”

Wade is strange and loud and quiet and Peter can’t keep track of the roller coaster rails of his emotions. He’s starting to get nauseous trying. So, Peter ignores him, sticks to a wall and launches off it, punching a thug in the cheek.

“Too good for his own damn good,” Wade says, almost too quietly for Peter to hear, and slams the handle of his sword to the base of someone’s skull.

By the time the last guy falls, Peter is tired. Peter is always tired, but even more so when he’s taken on at least a dozen guys and taken twice as many punches to the face. It’s not even close to the worst fight he’s ever been in, but looking at all the blood on the concrete and the awkward tilt of Deadpool’s barely-attached left hand makes it all feel like a bigger ordeal than it was.

Deadpool seems fine, as fine as he ever can be, waving his broken hand around like that’ll make it regenerate faster, splashing blood all over himself, while he toes a very angry gunman in the side and hums a tune that sounds suspiciously like Hit Me Baby, One More Time. Peter looks at him, like really fucking looks at him, and Wade must feel the stare because he turns his head back towards Spider-Man.

“It’s like you’re held together by manic energy and hot glue,” Peter says.

“Babe,” Wade says, extending the a longer than Peter is entirely comfortable with, “you know me so well.”

At this point, Peter finally notices that the sun had set around them, and he curses himself for the twelfth time today. He’s completely missed dinner.

“Anyway, thanks. For lending me a  _ hand _ and all,” Deadpool says and nudges his elbow into Peter’s side. “I’m winking under the mask.”

“That was repulsive,” Peter tells him. “Never insult me or my puns again. We will both remember this.”

“You say that, but how disappointed would you have been if I hadn’t made that joke?”

“Not even a little,” Peter responds. “And if you’re so worried about disappointing me, maybe you should put less knives in less throats next time.”

Deadpool is standing just a little too close and breathing a little too heavily. He smells like blood and gunpowder and french fry oil. The surface of his suit reflects the city lights, slick with blood that Peter knows is mostly not his own. He inhales and exhales loudly, and the sound rings in Peter’s ears. Peter takes half a step backwards, hoping Deadpool won’t take the half a step closer.

“Bad habits die hard,” Deadpool says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Come on,” Peter says, “this isn’t about smoking, this is about murder.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Deadpool responds. “Except for you, I guess.”

Peter feels hot angry blood rush to his face. He’s tired of Deadpool painting him like he’s a fucking saint. It’s one thing when Wade is all awkward laughs and frantic hands and  _ hey Spidey _ s! and getting excited about a team-up, or whatever you would call it, but he doesn’t need Wade reigning such heavy words down on his shoulders. Peter is so painfully, acutely aware that he isn’t perfect.

“I never said that,” he tells the mercenary.

“I know,” Wade answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Peter likes to assume the worst in people, the worst in Deadpool, and he’s usually not proven wrong. The flush going up his neck spreads.

“Oh,” Peter says, partway in between embarrassed and unconvinced, “okay.”

Wade is shuffling his feet around, still looking at the bodies on the ground. He’s acting like he’s being reprimanded, which Peter is half trying not to do.

“It’s just,” Deadpool says, “it’s not easy.”

“Life’s not easy,” Peter says, because he knows it isn’t, and isn’t sure if Deadpool does.

“Geez, I thought you were supposed to give me some kind of uplifting speech about hard work and heroism? Truth, justice and the American way? Like where’s the ‘I believe in you, Deadpool!’?”

“But I don’t believe in you,” Peter says, words leaving his mouth before his brain can finish thinking them.

“Okay,” Wade says, “ouch. But okay.”

Peter moreso wants to feel bad about it than actually feels bad about it. He’s clearly not Deadpool’s biggest fan and his life would be a hell of a lot easier if the mercenary could leave him alone, but he doesn’t think Wade is a terrible person. A pain in the ass and a menace to society without a doubt, but he’s not evil. And every time he and Peter run into each other, Wade seems so happy to see him.

“Sorry,” Peter says, wishing he could pinpoint what he’s apologizing for and if he even means it. Deadpool is still standing too close and it’s getting way too late so Peter decides he needs to leave. He starts walking away and Deadpool doesn’t follow him.

As he’s about to crawl up the side of the building and roof hop back to his apartment, he looks at the four corpses on the pavement and the ten or so guys that are knocked out or tied up.

He looks at Wade, still standing in the same place, and says, “I guess I do have to  _ hand _ it to you, Deadpool, you didn’t do the absolute worst job today.”

“Aw, shucks, you’ll make me blush,” Wade says, bringing one hand to the cheek of his mask and using the other to give Spider-Man a little wave. As he bends his left arm back toward the hero, he looks down at the gnarled pieces of muscle that are starting to knit his wrist back together. “Wait, seriously Spidey?”

“At least you’re  _ all right _ now,” Peter calls out from his spot on the brick wall, smiling despite himself.

“Fuck you too!!” Deadpool shouts back with a laugh that’s a little too loud.

**iii.**

Spider-Man is on the complete wrong side of the city when the mugger pulls out a knife and digs it into his side. He takes out the guy pretty quickly, tying him up and returning the wallet to the man it was stolen off, but he’s way too far downtown to make it all the way back to his apartment with blood sluggishly pouring out from between his ribs.

He’s fine, he’s just tired, so he drops down into the darkest alley he can find and sits on the pavement for a minute. When he presses his hand to the wound, his gloves come back dark and slick. Peter knows that he heals quicker than most, but not as quickly as some, and hopes he can wait it out until it’s bleeding slowly enough that he can make it home to patch himself up.

The ground is wet from the rain earlier in the day and the moisture clings uncomfortably to the fabric of his suit. His head falls against the wall behind him and looks up at the sliver of smog filled night sky visible between rooftops.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says, hissing in pain as his fingers press into the wound, trying to judge just how deep it is.

“You rang?” A voice responds, sounding like it’s coming from nowhere or the void itself or one of the concrete walls or Peter’s own personal hell. “I mean, I prefer Wade, but I’ll take what I can get.”

This city is too fucking big to run into the same person you don’t want to see this often. Peter doesn’t even take his eyes off the sky, but lifts his head up and presses it back into the wall behind him a little too forcefully. Again. And again. And again.

“What’s up, Webs?” Deadpool asks, moving down the alley towards where Peter is hiding. Peter doesn’t even know how Deadpool found him here, crouched behind a dumpster, staring into dirty clouds, counting and losing track of the airplanes flying above him, cursing his life.

“Hey, Deadpool,” Peter says, “can you do me a favor and like, leave? I don’t have the energy to run away from you right now.”

“Really? Damn. I do hate it when he leaves but I love watching him go,” Wade says, coming to stand in front of Peter and bending over to look at him.

“Woah,” he adds, “you’re not okay.”

“Ergh,” Peter eloquently grunts, “I’ve been more not okay.” 

He wonders how nonchalant he sounds right now with an oozing cut in his side and wonders why he cares how nonchalant he can sound in front of Deadpool.

“Well, duh,” Deadpool says and crouches onto the pavement, his back pressing against the wall across from Peter. “It’s kind of in the job description. Superhero. Full time job. Injuries inevitable, healing factor preferred. Experience in vigilantism a plus. Overblown sense of self-righteousness required. Benefits abso-fucking-lutely not included. Mercenaries need not apply.”

“Are you leaving?” Peter bends his head down from the sky to look at Deadpool. “It doesn’t sound like you’re leaving. I asked you to leave. I asked nicely.”

“My teachers always said I had problems following orders,” Deadpool says. “But then I joined the military and killed a ton of people because some guy told me to. Really proved them wrong.”

“Inspirational. Where’s your Purple Heart?”

“Last I checked, mine’s still squishy and red,” Deadpool answers, jabbing a finger into his chest, moving it around experimentally. "They kind of snub you out of the fancy ribbons after you’ve been dishonorably discharged.”

“So I guess you weren’t that good at following orders.”

“Guess not,” Wade says, poking the toe of his boot into the sole of Peter’s foot. “So if you tell me to leave again, chances are relatively high that I will not.”

“Please leave?”

“Nice try, but no dice,” Wade answers, shifting around a little before properly sitting down. “Your hand’s clamped on that there latissimus dorsi pretty tight, Webs, can I see what’s up?”

“Blood,” Peter answers, “blood is what’s up.”

“You’re fragile,” Wade tells him.

Peter’s spine reacts a little too violently to that word and the movement causes his side to ache in protest. No one has gotten away with calling Peter fragile since he was fifteen and he really, really doesn’t like it very much.

“Fuck you,” Peter says, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, it’s weird to me,” Wade says, poking a finger into the puddle he’s sitting next to, “when people don’t heal, you know? Like, you’re in pain. That blows.”

“I heal,” Peter says. “Just, well, slower. And you feel pain, don’t you?”

Wade laughs.

“Baby, pain is just elevator music to me these days -- always there, eating at my cells until they fix themselves up, so it can start chowing down on them again,” he looks at Peter. “But like, you can die. That’s fucked up.”

“You can’t die,” Peter says, like the idiot that he is. “I mean, you die all the time and come back from it. That’s even more fucked up.”

“Keep your eyes peeled for my autobiography, Spidey. New York Times bestselling author Wade Wilson presents:  _ Even More Fucked Up, the story of a Merc with a Mouth and a Dream and a Whole Lot of Guns.” _

“I’d definitely read the Wikipedia summary, at least,” Peter’s beginning to feel a pleasant rush of endorphins as his accelerated healing rate gets to work, slowing the bleeding a bit. He looks at Wade. “Does it hurt?”

“What, when I fell from heaven?”

“I’m trying to have a serious conversation, here,” Peter says. “I think.”

“And that was probably your first mistake.”

“Wade.”

“Well,” Wade says, taking a big deep inhale, “I sure as hell don’t see a bright white light. I can tell you that for-fucking-free.”

“I guess you wouldn’t,” Peter says as he pushes his fingertips in around his injury, testing to see how much blood comes leaking out. Less, but still too much. “I mean, that was supposed to sound less mean.”

Peter is inherently a people pleaser. He has a list of enemies longer than his webbing can stretch, but he can even make time to talk to Doc Ock about a good science joke or the powers of relinquishing your supervillain nature or whatever. Something about Deadpool, something about Wade, never lets him stop pulling his punches. He’s always been a talker, sure, but Deadpool pulls the cruelest kinds of honesty from the lines of Spider-Man’s suit, and Peter can’t seem to keep his damn mouth shut.

“That’s okay,” Wade says, “I know you mean to be a little mean and I forgive you.”

“Only subconsciously.”

“Is it still subconscious if you know it’s subconscious?”

“Yes?” Peter says, “no? I’m not sure. I wasn’t a psychology major.”

“And boy,” Deadpool says, “let’s thank the good lord on that one.”

“If we have something to thank him for today, I guess.”

Wade just hums, looking at his finger in the water, swirling it around in strange little spirals. Peter welcomes the momentary silence. It’s awkward, sure, and he knows the only reason Deadpool has his mouth shut is because his brain is running through a hundred and five different things to say to Spider-Man right now, each one more inappropriate than the last, and he’s struggling to land on the perfect one.

“Drowning,” is what Wade says after two or three planes have flown past.

“What?”

“Right after ‘does it hurt,’” Wade says, not facing Spider-Man, just pressing his palm into the wet concrete, letting the water weigh down his gloves, “people always wanna know, ‘what’s the most peaceful?’ or, ‘what’s the least painful?’ or, ‘what’s your favorite?’”

He moves his head, mask facing the introspective sky.

“Okay,” Peter says, forever unable to choose his words carefully, “that’s um... dark.”

“Yep,” Wade says, “it sure is.”

Peter finds Deadpool’s life so profoundly pathetic. He talks too quickly and thinks too much and when he grins at Peter, Peter can always see the lines of his face through his mask. Right now he looks at Deadpool, who is looking at the orange glow of the New York skyline, and sees nothing written into that red and black fabric.

“But, you know,” Wade says, because Peter is staring and saying nothing to fill the silence, “live and learn and die and live again and maybe learn something new this time but probably not. I’m here to address any and all morbid curiosities you may have, Spider-Man.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind, I guess,” Peter says, and he knows he’s seen Wade without the mask on before, but right now he’s wondering what the other man’s eyes look like. Sticky fingers go back to his side, feeling the congealing before he notices the bleeding has almost entirely stopped.

“You holding up okay, champ?” Wade asks when he notices Peter poking at his side.

“Yeah,” Peter says, “I think I’m done.”

“With this conversation? With me? With life in general?”

“Healing.”

“Oh,” Wade says, “that’s good? Are you leaving now?”

Peter stands shakily, feeling more fatigued than he should, using the bricks to steady himself as he moves.

“Yeah,” he says, “I should.”

“That’s okay,” Deadpool says. “I’m sure Spidey has more important places to be than hanging out with us in a dumpster on a Saturday night.”

Peter’s sigh in response turns into a groan as he peels himself off the wall, knowing he’s gonna be feeling this one for the next few days. Every time he ends up in an alleyway next to Deadpool, his life feels less and less amazing and more and more like a tragic series of misadventures punctuated with various knives in various sides. Today, he was just lucky contestant number one.

“Gotta get home and patch this up,” Peter says, testing his balance, feeling a little steadier. “Not all of us can just wait it out, you know.”

“Fragile,” Wade says, and Peter can imagine him sticking his tongue out when he says it.

“Shut up.”

“Can I help?” Wade says, pulling his mask away from the night sky. “Real quick. Lemme just see what I can do.”

“I need your help like I need a hole in the head.”

“Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. And it hurts a lot, actually, so that isn’t a very nice thing to say,” Wade responds, filing through the ratty fanny pack hanging off his hips.

Frantic gloved hands start pulling impossible things from it ranging from grenades to a half-eaten sandwich to a rubber duck and everything in between. Peter’s about to walk away when Deadpool grabs the third scarf from its depths, but then he makes a small “aha!” sound of victory.

“Knew this would come in handy,” Wade says, brandishing a small package containing what Peter assumes to be a band-aid. Peter sighs, knowing he probably needs at least four stitches and that Deadpool is literally trying to put a band-aid over a bullet hole. Stab wound. Whatever.

“Seriously?”

“It’s a Spongebob band-aid,” Wade says, standing up. “Please? It’ll make me feel better.”

Fuck it, Peter thinks. He’s lost a lot of blood today.

“Just make it quick.”

“Yessir!” Deadpool says with a mock salute. “Don’t worry. I’m a great nurse.”

Peter twists himself a bit, showing his wound, and mildly appreciates Wade’s sharp intake of breath and the  _ yikes, Webs  _ when he sees the injury. He unpeels the plaster from its wrapping and fixes it delicately to Peter’s rib, gloved fingers smoothing down the edges one or two or five more times than necessary.

“I’m so sorry,” Wade says, “this one has Squidward on it.”

When he looks down at his side, Peter can see the ugly turquoise shape of a hooked nose hanging down from permanently unamused yellow eyes. Deadpool’s looking at it too, mask creased around his eyebrows, looking genuinely despondent. Peter smiles.

“A true tragedy. How will I ever survive.”

“Sending you my thoughts and prayers, Spidey. Here’s hoping you pull through.”

Peter raises the hand on his uninjured side to the building on his left and shoots webbing towards it. He knows he should probably thank Deadpool, but doesn’t, and keeps thinking about how he’s going to have to head straight home and rip off the band-aid before stitching himself up. Wade says something behind him, but Peter is up on the rooftop before he can hear what it is.

**iv.**

It would take Peter both hands to count the number of days since his last shower or decent night’s sleep. His eyes are sticking together at the lashes every time they fall closed for a moment and he’s running on about three hours of rest and seven cups of coffee, feeling twitchy and unhinged as he ties up a group of guys in sharp suits that look suspiciously similar to the ones Deadpool keeps running into. The familiar guns in their hands remind him of all the holes littered through black and red kevlar as he pulls the webbing a little tighter.

It’s only eleven when he’s perched on a rooftop in Midtown, knowing he’s nowhere near done for the night. He’s sat on the ledge, carelessly waving his legs back and forth, watching technicolor lights flash against the sea of tourists flowing beneath him. He almost dares to hope the villainous swine infesting the city will be kind enough to leave the helpless citizens alone, at least until morning.

He’s starting to blind himself by staring at the Coca-Cola ads for too long, when a hand appears out of nowhere, curling over the side of the building.

Deadpool is absolutely not the world’s most graceful guy, and Peter spares a moment of silence to all the heroes who can’t hop, skip, jump or fly. He thinks of Captain America, running across rows and rows of fire escapes while Spider-Man can just zip to the top of any building. Wade has one arm and one leg splayed across the rooftop, pathetically trying to swing the rest of his body weight over. At least Captain Rogers makes it look cool.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Deadpool says, on his belly and out of breath, crawling towards where Peter is seated. “The other heroes will talk.”

“I think the other heroes already talk about you.”

“Only bad things, I hope,” Wade says, next to Peter, still lying on his stomach with his hands now folded and propping up his head. It wouldn’t surprise Peter if he started kicking his black boots back and forth. “Just kidding, I know it’s all bad. Ha ha. Doesn’t kill me on the inside and shred my already nonexistent sense of self-worth even further into infinitesimal bits of glittery pink confetti or anything, no sir-ee.”

“Wade,” Peter says, more pitying than annoyed, “if you’re going to sit here, could you at least not sit like an idiot?”

“Hey,” Deadpool says, offended, “this is the ideal secret sharing pose. It’s been perfected by teenage girls over the centuries.”

At this point, he does bend his legs into ninety degree angles and start waving them back and forth. Figures, Peter thinks, looking away from Wade and down to the street below. He catches his own feet still swaying over the ledge and forces himself to stop their movement.

“Soo,” Wade continues, “now a good time for that secret identity talk or what?”

“Everyone knows your secret identity, Wilson,” Peter says, placing a hand on the edge of the building and standing up, preparing to swing off it the next time Deadpool says anything evenly vaguely annoying or invasive.

“I’ve shown you mine, so you should show me yours?”

“Bye, Wade.”

“Wait!” Wade practically yells. “So, weird question, have you eaten?”

Peter’s stomach rumbles so violently he can feel instant coffee granules rubbing against saltine crackers in his intestines.

“Um,” Peter says, “does coffee count as food?”

“If you try hard enough, it can be,” Wade answers. “But also, no. I’m going to say no.”

It’s not really a secret that Peter doesn’t take the best care of himself. All the pennies that he collects from the Bugle go toward rent and bills and instant noodle packets. He spends his free time flying between skyscrapers and laying on his couch licking his wounds. Crime fighting doesn’t allow a lot of room for self-care, Peter thinks, looking at the rips and holes still in Wade’s suit.

“Then I guess I should go do that.”

“I know a place,” Wade says so quickly his words are tripping over each other. “Great little food truck. Cheap eats, bad service, late hours and they never seem to care what kind of bodily fluids you’re covered in.”

“Alone. I should go do that alone,” Peter says. “Also, ew.”

Deadpool’s boots fall to the ground with a loud, sad  _ thunk _ .

“C’mon,” he says with a whine. “And I’m talking blood and guts, Spidey, get your mind out of the gutter.”

“Still, ew,” Peter tells him, one foot practically over the skyscraper’s edge. “I’m going to leave now.”

“Stupid Lone Wolf-Man. Uh, Lone Spider-Wolf? Wait, no, Lone Wolf Spider! I knew I’d get there eventually,” Wade says. “Also, in my head that joke was funny and well-delivered and not awkward and needy.”

“That was a joke?”

“Ack,” Wade says, rolling over onto his back and clutching at his chest. “You wound me. How will I survive? My healing factor doesn’t work on sick burns.”

“It’s managed to survive me this long. I have faith,” Peter says, cracking his back and twisting his wrists before preparing to  _ thwip  _ away. “Bye again, Wade.”

Deadpool hops to his feet pretty quickly, but Peter sticks to the side of a department store across the street quicker. He looks back and sees the speck that is Wade Wilson, waving his arms and obviously trying to yell something, but Peter can’t hear a breath of it above the high winds and car horns. Peter shakes his head at the image and crawls upwards, sticking to bricks and windowsills all the way.

He hops across more buildings, eyes glued to the streets. The resistant air cuts around his suit sharply but comfortingly as he moves, slowing him down only a bit as he crosses block after block.

Bryant Park is a green smear against the city skyline, and as he swings low past it, he catches a painfully familiar flash of black and red running past the fountain. Seriously?

“Seriously?” Peter asks, landing in front of the park. There are too many people here, and they’re pointing and taking pictures, but Peter is looking at Wade.

“Golly, you’re eating pavement real quick there, Webs. Where’s the fire?” Wade says, bent over with his hands on his knees as he pants in deep heavy breaths, sparing no melodramatics.

“Literally everywhere. There is always a fire somewhere, I just have to find it.”

“My brain is a pretty even split on whether that was a badass thing to say or if you just sound like a boy scout with a god complex.”

Peter is horribly embarrassed to find that he agrees. Except, really, he should know which side of the line Spider-Man stands on. It’s easy for him to think that he’s cooler than he is, when Deadpool keeps showing up out of nowhere and telling him how cool he is. And refusing to leave him alone. And, sometimes, flirting with him.

He notices some tourists rushing towards him, with big huge smiling faces, and then he webslings across the street instead of answering Wade.

Deadpool is, unsurprisingly, persistent.

“You’re following me,” Peter says, crawling up the side of a building as Wade awkwardly clings to a fire escape below.

“No?” Wade says. “No. There’s no question mark. I am definitely not following you.”

“But, you are,” Peter says, jumping down to another rooftop, pausing a moment so Wade can follow.

“Am I? I thought we were hanging out.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“I dunno,” Wade says, now standing and shuffling his feet back and forth a little. “You keep slowing down and stopping and talking to me.”

Peter feels a self-conscious rush of warmth flood to his face. He is waiting for Deadpool, letting him keep up. It feels weird, being called out by Wade of all people, but the guy seems more perceptive than Peter gives him credit for.

Spider-Man’s legs aren’t moving him in the opposite direction and Peter wishes he could pin down the reason why. He doesn’t hate Wade, not at all, but something about Deadpool just puts him on edge and produces a soft, hot anger in the bottom of his stomach. Usually, the merc’s frantic actions and quick mouth are distracting enough that Peter doesn’t acknowledge it as more than a slight annoyed burn, but every time he stops to think about it too much, it grows to the point of irrationality and confusion and he just wants to websling away.

“We’re really not. I’m busy,” he answers.

Peter jumps away, as he is wont to do, and doesn’t turn back to see Deadpool who he knows is still following behind him. He hops from building to building with newfound speed and determination.

Wade somehow manages to follow him for about seven more blocks, but as Peter runs across the roof of the Port Authority, he turns and notices that Deadpool isn’t in eyesight. He finds it weird for a moment, because Wade isn’t really the type to just give up on something. He’s the perfect cocktail of misplaced idolization and stubbornness and low self-preservation to follow Spider-Man across Midtown in the middle of the night. He can’t keep up with Peter at all, but he does alright clambering up fire escapes half a block behind, out of breath but hooting and hollering whatever thoughts splash into his brain, words Peter can only half hear. He’s sure as hell not quick enough to follow Spidey across the city, but sometimes Peter thinks that Wade is the only person with a mouth as fast as his.

Shooting a web across the street, Peter swings over, skating a little too closely to the concrete, earning a few honks from taxi cabs and some shouts from drunk kids tripping into the bus station. His chest gets familiarly tight as he dives so low before he shoots back up towards the New York Times building, fingers sticking to a window on the 42nd floor. He really hopes they’re not on a deadline tomorrow, because he doesn’t want anyone to be in the office at this hour and Jameson would be  _ so  _ pissed if anyone at the Times got a decent picture of Spider-Man.

Peter just likes this building because it’s tall and it’s a busy area and it’s so damn touristy and there are so many cops that he can lay on the roof and look at the moon for a little while. Spider-Man always climbs to the tallest skyscrapers he can find. It feels safe, in a way that isn’t at all. He likes to look down at the people, knowing he can swing down and save them at any moment, that familiar burn always dropping into his abdomen no matter how many times he falls.

Standing above the city feels as familiar as it does isolating. He looks up at the three stars he can see through the veil of smog in the sky, and thinks about how small he is. He really is just a boy scout with a complex, always trying his best and always feeling like it isn’t enough.

It’s one of those nights when he’s feeling pretty morose about superheroism in general. He’s about to drop off the edge of the building when the door to the rooftop smashes open with a loud, clanking bang.

“Special delivery,” Wade practically sings, bursting onto the roof. He’s holding six pizza boxes and Peter can see his ridiculous expression warp the fabric of his mask.

Peter doesn’t even say anything for a good handful of seconds, just looks at Wade and maybe his jaw is hanging open a bit, because there are so many bits and pieces of this guy that Peter just can’t seem to wrap his head around.

“How,” Peter asks, “did you get up here?”

Deadpool puts the pizza on the roof next to Spider-Man and starts pulling an assortment of beer cans from the pouches around his waist. He arranges a disorderly semi-circle of food and drink around Peter, before sitting next to him.

“The elevator, silly,” Wade says and has the audacity to  _ bop  _ Peter on the nose. He begins flipping open boxes and the cheese looks sad and disheveled from its journey, smelling so strongly of grease that Peter’s stomach practically jumps out of his throat. Wade waves his hands over the food.

“You must be hungry, coffee boy. Bon appetit.”

“This is,” Peter says, bringing his fingers to the edge of his mask, not lifting it up just yet, “a lot of pizza.”

“I went to one of those dollar-a-slice places, slapped down a fifty and told the greasy kid behind the counter to do the math,” Wade answers, grabbing a pepperoni slice in one hand and ripping his mask off with the other. “Sorry if rotting flesh and septic shock are like a turn off for you, but I gotta eat my vegetables to get big and strong, and the mask just gets in the way.”

Peter is too busy looking at the food to even glance at Wade’s face. He’s seen it before, anyway.

He peels the bottom of his own mask up, not even past his nose, just barely enough to shovel pizza in, and grabs two slices at once, like he thinks Deadpool is gonna take the food away from him. He’s sitting cross-legged on the rooftop and puts one piece on his thigh, ripping the crust off the other and taking a huge bite out of it.

He can feel Wade looking at him, so he turns. The lights of the city create strange shadows against the scars of his face and he’s chewing like a cow.

“You eat your pizza like a nerd,” he says, cracking open a drink and taking a loud gulp.

“I eat the crust first because it’s the worst part. Don’t judge,” Peter answers, taking a particularly large bite in protest. It feels stale and awkward on his tongue.

“Then why don’t you just leave the crust?”

“Are you asking a true born and bred New Yorker to waste pizza? That’s just insulting.”

“I feel like you’re perpetuating a harmful stereotype.”

Peter swallows the last of the crust and takes a huge bite of cheese.

“Not harmful and not a stereotype if it’s true,” he says, chewing thoughtfully on the cheesy cardboard-like substance rolling around in his mouth. “God, this pizza is awful.”

“I’m sorry my dollar pizza doesn’t live up to your nerd standards.”

“What does ‘nerd standards’ even mean?” Peter asks.

“Well, for one, you eat your pizza like a nerd. See point A,” Wade says, spitting out little crumbs as he does. “And please, no normal not-lame person loves a bad joke as much as you do, I figure it must be the only reason you’ve stopped calling the cops on me. And, sometimes, you use all these sciencey words in a way that makes me wanna take all your lunch money.”

Peter rips the crust off the second slice and shoves half of it into his mouth in one bite. He figures you can give a tiger radioactive superpowers, but you can’t change its stripes. The crispy edges of the pizza scratch his throat as he swallows.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t really have any lunch money,” he says, watching Wade watch the way his mouth forms the words. He gives a small, uncomfortable nod. “Um, thanks. For this. It was nice.”

“So you’re not mad I followed you across the city?”

“No,” Peter answers with what’s almost a laugh, “I’m definitely mad about that.”

“C’mon, what’s a little playful stalking between friends?”

“I find it weird that a serial killer follows me around in the dead of night? How irrational.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, baby. I’m not a serial killer,” Deadpool says, finishing his drink and crushing the can flat against the cement. “Serial killers don’t get paid.”

The pizza box is about two feet away from Peter, which is just too far, so he webs another piece into his hand. Wade opens another beer, and it looks pretty tempting, but Peter reminds himself that he’s on duty and he’s decidedly not hanging out with Wade and Deadpool just pointed out that he gets money to murder people, like that gets him brownie points, and Peter drums the fingers that aren’t shoveling pizza into his mouth against his thigh.

“You could… not do that,” Peter says, staring at the food in his hand.

“What?” Wade asks, a little too genuinely.

“Kill people for money,” Peter answers. “It’s not a good thing to do.”

“Listen, babes. I know you mean well and it’s kinda your modus operandi to fix the morally corrupt, but you do know that killing people doesn’t make me a bad person, right?” Deadpool says. “Being a bad person makes me kill people.”

The money thing makes it worse in a way, Peter thinks. It feels so morally bankrupt. He wants to mention it but swallows instead, thinking about who paid for this pizza, and decides to stop thinking about it.

“You only kill bad people,” Peter says, unsure which one of them he’s trying to reassure.

“Are you defending me?” Wade asks, and as Peter opens his mouth to respond, he continues. “Because if you are I need to make a note of the exact date and time because this is  _ so _ going in my diary.”

“January 13th, 1:15 a.m. Spider-Man spoke the words: ‘Wade, I don’t think you’re completely awful.’”

“Can you write that on my arm so I can get it tattooed?”

“Anything for my fans,” Peter says. “But no. Absolutely not.”

“S’okay, it wouldn’t stick around anyways,” Wade answers, with a string of cheese hanging from his mouth that his tongue desperately seeks after, skating over scars and scabs. Peter realizes he’s looking and looks away, back to what could be his fifth or sixth slice. He hasn’t been bothered to keep count, focusing on chewing instead.

He doesn’t feel right about the conversation ending, but doesn’t feel right about pressing the subject either. Deadpool is what he is, and Peter wants Wade to be better but has no idea how to go about it. It feels overwhelming. You can give a vicious, bloodthirsty, katana-wielding tiger a small voice of conscience, but you can’t change its stripes or take away its katanas. Wade doesn’t like that. Peter tried, once.

Something about it also strikes Peter as unfair. If Deadpool could be less awful, then he would be less awful. Probably. He needs help, or something.

The pizza is starting to taste more and more like glue in his mouth, but that doesn’t stop him from grabbing another piece. Deadpool is chattering enthusiastically at him about what Peter thinks is the newest episode of Grey’s Anatomy, while Peter doesn’t say anything and nods at all the wrong parts because, apparently, Wade is decidedly not happy that Alex and Jo have gotten back together and it is a  _ bad _ thing.

Peter doesn’t really notice when Deadpool stops talking, because he’s too busy sitting on a skyscraper, dripping pizza grease down 52 stories while a contract killer chews too loudly next to him, thinking about the events in his life that have led up to this moment.

When Wade eventually realizes that no one is paying attention to him, he starts to whistle at Peter and wave his arms around a bit.

“Hey, Earth to Webs. Earth to Webs. Have we made contact?” he says, leaning over to aggressively poke at Peter’s shoulder. He does it once, and then again. “You’re awfully contemplative this day slash evening slash morning.”

“I’m just thinking,” Peter answers, shrugging away from the invasive hand. “Quietly. You should try it sometime.”

“Couldn’t if I tried,” Wade says, tapping his index finger to his skull. “The boys are real loud in here.”

It’s something he knows he should be too polite to ask about, but can’t help himself. It’s the big, crazy elephant in the room and it has enough ammunition to take out the surrounding four blocks. Aunt May taught him it was rude to pry and Uncle Ben always said a man’s business is his own business, but unfortunately for them, Peter was a chem major. Curious and smart and stupid all in equal measure, and prone to poke at things until they blow up in his face.

“What do you mean?” Peter says more than asks.

Wade is quiet, his head tilting back and forth, from side to side.

“Ugh,” he says, “why?”

Peter doesn’t know what that means, so he decides to poke harder.

“Does it bother you?”

“Yes,” Wade answers. “No. I don’t know. Sometimes. Yes”

“Yes?”

“Of course they bother me, Spidey,” Wade says, shoving an entire slice into his mouth to muffle his words. “I’m used to it mostly, though.”

“Mostly?” Peter continues, wondering when he’s going to learn to keep his damn mouth shut before he starts asking Deadpool all kinds of uncomfortable questions about his father or something.

“Like, I don’t know,” Wade begins, looking away and smacking his teeth together, “it’s just hard to decide on things. Like, do I wanna keep killing people for the rest of my life, which is forever by the way, my life is forever, or do I wanna not be a sack of shit? But like money is good, but like the X-Men are good too, you know? And I don’t know, sometimes I just really, really wanna kick your ass, but mostly I think you’re way too cool for us.”

Peter frowns at the pizza in front of him. A big glob of cheese slides off the edge and slaps against the floor with a mocking, wet thud. He watches pools of grease fall and disappear into the crevices of concrete and wishes he could join them.

“I don’t think I’m too cool for anybody,” he says, eventually, only half paying attention to the words as they leave his mouth. “I mean, except for evil people, but I wouldn’t really say I’m ‘too cool’ for them.”

“Too radical? Too righteous.”

“Too morally composed, I guess.”

Even that doesn’t sound right to Peter’s ears. A tiny, rebellious part at the back of his brain wants to add  _ too unforgiving. _

Wade isn’t eating anymore. Instead, he pulls at the fabric of his gloves, worrying tiny little holes at the fingertips.

“Are we evil?” Deadpool asks, not taking his gaze off his hands. “Are you too cool for us?”

If there’s anyone that Peter is too cool for, it would have to be Wade Wilson. With his murderous tendencies and terrible jokes and twitchy legs and cartoon band-aids and unhealthy obsession with various sitcoms and even unhealthier fixation on Spider-Man. He either smiles with only half his face or with all of his teeth and Peter can sometimes see the gooey tissue of his gums and it matches the angry pink lines on the rest of his skin.

“Um,” Peter says. “I guess not.”

When he turns to Wade, he had forgotten the other man was maskless, so he’s surprised to be looking him in the face. He’s staring Peter down with a hard curve in his forehead where his eyebrows should be. The eye contact feels so overwhelming even though Wade can’t see Peter meeting it, and Peter looks away.

“I like you,” Wade says after Peter has spent too much time letting the loud gusts of wind try to silence his thoughts. He feels the tips of his ears start to warm up. Leave it to Deadpool, of all people, to say something so surprising and off putting, while also being so fucking obvious.

“I mean, I know,” Peter says because it’s all he can think to say, and coughs into his gloved hand.

“Well,” Wade says, finally looking away from the lines of Spider-Man’s mask. “You don’t have to be a dick about it, Han.”

The burn from Peter’s ears starts to blotch down his neck.

“God, I wish you would stop talking sometimes.”

Wade smiles and lifts yet another stray can to his mouth, waggling it around and letting the contents swish about.

“I’ll drink to that, babe,” he says, swallowing loudly. Something gives Peter the feeling that there are a lot of things Wade would drink to. He remembers the sad, forgotten food in his hand and takes a bite, face still feeling too warm.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Wade continues. “Hanging out while no one is bleeding.”

Peter opens his mouth to press the issue, to repeat for the hundredth time that isn’t true, but then he looks at the pizza in his hand and closes it. He remembers all the alleyways, all the jokes, the Squidward band-aid that is still rotting on his bathroom counter because he keeps forgetting to throw it away. He thinks about the beers Wade’s had and the lazy half-smile of his chapped lips. The guys in the alley they fought together. The fact that Wade likes him.

He wants to argue with Wade. He always, always wants to argue with Wade.

“Sure,” he says instead.

The pizza between them is starting to run desperately low and Peter finds himself grateful for his spidey-metabolism or whatever, because he could probably use the 6,000 or so calories he’s just ingested. As Wade desperately tears open the last box, Peter realizes that he should probably leave soon. It would be the sensible thing to do. People are being robbed and beaten across the city right now, and Spider-Man is sat on a rooftop counting stars and fucking eating pizza.

Wade is unusually quiet, just humming to himself and bouncing his knees. Peter really, really should leave soon.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he tells Deadpool, “I ran into a few more of your guys.”

Wade stops his bouncing and tilts his head to the side, reminding Peter of how lost and confused he looked, cocooned in webbing all those months ago.

“My guys?” Wade asks. “Don’t tell me I have guys. Guys that I don’t know about and slash or have forgotten to call back.”

“At least, I think they’re your guys,” Peter adds. “Awfully generic, but very evil. Suit guys. Fancy guns. Very  _ Men in Black _ . Seems like your type.”

“Oh,” Deadpool says, the one syllable hanging in the air over Peter’s head, “those guys.”

“Are they still after you? What’s their deal?”

Deadpool’s whole body language shifts, and Peter somehow can’t rely on the expressive crevices of the other man’s face to figure out what he’s thinking.

“Fuck,” Wade says, taking his mask from where it was crumbled at his side and pulling it back on, “I didn’t realize the time. I should go.”

“Go?” Peter asks. “Go where?”

He’s never really stopped to think about what Deadpool does when he isn’t annoying him or murdering people. It’s selfish, he knows, but it’s hard to imagine a Deadpool existing outside of their occasional midnight rendezvous or a SHIELD standard issue cell.

“A place,” Deadpool says, standing. “You know, for a thing.”

He walks away, falling off the roof, and Peter doesn’t have the nerve to watch how or when he hits the ground.

Peter wishes he could pin down exactly what he said or what happened to cause Deadpool to up and leave like that. It’s unusual, is all, because Spider-Man is always the one who leaves the scene first. He assumed Wade would be happy to lie on a rooftop and chat shit for as long as Peter would let him. He kind of figured the guy didn’t really have much else to do, and that’s coming from Peter. 

Feeling that low, angry burn start to boil in his gut, Peter thinks about how he’s too old and has seen too much shit to be as naive as he is. Laughing at dumb one-liners and having dinner with a fucking mercenary, like it was a normal thing to do. _Hanging out_. Crooked teeth and the incessant low hum of the voice coming out from around them made him forget, for just too long, where he was and who he was and who he was with. He closes the lid on the last of the boxes, still with a few errant slices inside, and decides to just leave it. The wind or a very confused maintenance man will take it away.

He just gets distracted, Peter tells himself. Deadpool is a fast talker.

Peter stands up and drops off the roof, trying to feel like he hasn’t been tricked and trying even harder to feel like he isn’t disappointed.


	2. Chapter 2

**v.**

Deadpool has been laying low for a few weeks and Peter is too stupid to realize that no news is good news, so he goes looking for him. Spending too much time of his patrol weaving in and out of all the alleyways in the city, he figures the mercenary must be lurking in one of them.

Despite Deadpool being as confusing and unreasonable as he is, Peter finds his small hours of the morning missing the other man’s presence. Exhausting nightly patrols follow exhausting work days, and Peter doesn’t get out much considering all his friends are dead or criminals or on the opposite side of the country. He missed dinner with Aunt May last week because he had to fight Shocker and it wasn’t even a fun fight at all.

Whatever has been causing Wade to avoid Peter, Peter knows it must be something interesting.

He’s circled around the whole island from Alphabet City up through Harlem, and he’s coming back around towards Midtown when he lands in Central Park. Spider-Man avoids the park for its distinct lack of skyscrapers to swing across and its painful amount of tourists who try to snap pictures of him, but it’s the dead of night and Peter is tired and running low on options and it’s been  _ two months _ and maybe Wade knows the places he likes to steer clear of.

Walking in the direction of the carousel, the soft press of grass feels so unfamiliar underneath the soles of his boots and he hears a solitary voice filter across the landscape. He walks steadily toward the noise, preparing himself for a fight.

It’s hard to discern the shadows of the trees from the shadows of the bushes from the shadow of the figure, hunched over and pulling its limbs in awkward directions. Peter moves closer.

“So, they had this many guys on this day, and then this many the next time Spidey and I saw ‘em. Webs did  _ not  _ do most of the work on that one. I helped a lot,” Wade, of course it’s Wade, is talking to himself. He’s bent low and speaking quickly. “And then we followed them back over here, and there were  _ more  _ guys, but we got rid of them, but kids are still going missing no matter what Cyclops says and I know we all don’t believe in coincidences, you know?”

If it wasn’t for the gravelly voice and the familiar curve of his back, Peter probably would’ve carried on in his search. Deadpool is crouched in front of a tree wearing jeans and a hoodie instead of his usual suit. His bare fingers are drawing hectic lines in the soil in front of him.

“Wade?” Peter steps forward slowly, like he’s approaching something he isn’t sure he’s ready to deal with. “What’s going on?”

“Spidey?” Wade asks, looking up. He’s wearing a baseball cap and Peter can only count on one hand the amount of times he’s seen Wade’s lips move as they form that single word. “What are you doing here?”

“Um,” Peter answers, trying to think of something other than  _ trying to find you, dumbass. _ “Fighting crime?”

Wade looks confused and Peter feels awkward. He spent so much time trying to figure out where and why Deadpool was hiding, he hadn’t really considered what he would say when he finally found him. In Peter’s hyperactive imagination, he was going to run into Deadpool either killing someone or getting himself killed, and Peter would intervene one way or another. He didn’t expect to find Wade crouched in Central Park, looking so small and talking to himself, dragging erratic fingers through the dirt.

“Not much crime in the park at three a.m.” Deadpool says, sounding dismissive as he returns to the map he’s painting next to him.

“Trespassing is a crime,” Peter says, taking a step closer. “Trespassing on a National Landmark is a federal crime.”

“You gonna take us in, officer?” Deadpool asks. “After all of the absolutely batshit nonsense I’ve pulled, Spidey’s gonna get us done for trespassing?”

Peter’s initial instinct is to respond with,  _ what absolutely batshit nonsense have you pulled lately?  _ and his second is,  _ of course not, you idiot _ and the third is,  _ are you okay? _

“I could,” he says, “if I wanted to.”

“Well, do you want to?” 

He should want to. Peter knows that he should want to. Instead of answering the question, he walks closer and bends down to look at Wade’s drawings in the earth.

“What’s this?” He says instead, pointing a finger towards the lines, careful not to smudge or upset them in any way.

“I’m retracing my steps,” Deadpool tells him. “This doesn’t concern you, Spider-Man.”

“Tell me what’s going on. I should know what’s going on in my city. Maybe I can help.”

Wade takes his hands off the ground and moves them towards the brim of his cap, pulling it further down to cover more of his face. Peter doesn’t understand why he’s bothering, the park is so poorly lit at this hour and no one is even in it.

“Bad guys are doing bad things,” Wade says. “Welcome to New York City.”

“Talk to me,” Peter says, putting a hand on Wade’s shoulder. He finds it somehow surprising that the jersey of the sweatshirt feels soft and pliable beneath his gloves.

“Seriously, I,” Deadpool says, “think that you should leave. As much as I love a good team-up, I got this one. No sidekicks necessary.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Peter says, not really sure why he’d asked, but suddenly desperate to know the answer.

Wade is quiet for a few moments and it makes Peter want to turn around and leave. Forget all about the merc for a few more months and beat himself up for ever going on this ridiculous goose chase in the first place. What did he expect, to find Deadpool volunteering at an animal shelter or helping old ladies cross the street? He should’ve known he’d find him here, crouched in the dirt, looking all the shadier for having ditched his usual get-up.

“Yeah,” Wade says, voice cracking around the word like Peter dug his hands into his chest and ripped it out. “You don’t know that? I thought you said I’m not subtle.”

Of course he trusts Spider-Man. Peter feels stupid for even asking. He feels like Wade will always surprise him, even by giving the most obvious answers.  _I like you_ , Peter remembers as he sits down next to Wade, trying to decipher the shadows on his face. Wade doesn’t ask if Peter trusts him back and Peter is grateful. His hand is still on Deadpool’s shoulder. 

“You said that, actually,” Peter says, mouth curling under the mask. “I just laughed at you afterwards.”

“Oh yeah,” Wade says with a snort. His nose scrunches awkwardly. “You’re a real pal.”

Between tonight and the whole pizza thing, Peter finds himself trying not to stare. He doesn’t know why, because he could be looking at Wade’s face all day long and the other man would never know. Maybe he’s put off by the look of it, but that doesn’t seem right. Something about staring Wade down feels invasive. He wouldn’t want Wade to look at him the way he wants to look at Wade right now.

“So what’s the deal here?” Peter asks, staring into the grass. “Tell me what I need to know.”

“Well,” Deadpool begins, hand extending towards his drawing. His fingernails are long and yellow. “Someone paid me to look into something and I looked a little too hard. I followed the trail here, you remember, that day where you got all mad at me for unaliving people? Which, actually, was probably a good thing because I think their friends and loved ones didn’t like that they were, y’know….unalive. Which is why I was laying low from them that other time, tryna gather some intel, until we worked together, right over here, and kicked their asses. We made the best team. Eat your heart out, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. After that I noticed that we were not dealing with random bad guys, but were, in fact, dealing with Bad Guys on a Mission, which we all know brings the party way, way down.”

Peter’s tired eyes can barely follow the enthusiastic trajectory of Deadpool’s hands as they fly across the map when he talks. Being Wade must be exhausting.

“Okay, so what’s their mission?”

“To kidnap mutants and experiment on them.”

When you run in the circles that Peter does, some things are just common knowledge. Some supers are more protective of who they are and where they come from, and Wade has less self-preservation than anyone Peter has ever met, so of course everyone knows his story. Peter knows it the way he knows the scars of Wade’s face or his healing factor or the voices that Wade doesn’t like to talk about but Peter has heard him talk to. 

“That is,” Peter says, “that’s a heavy accusation. Have you talked to the X-Men?”

“Cyclops said he doesn’t have time for my bullshit,” Wade says in a dark, dark voice. “And that I need more fucking proof.”

“Okay, so what proof do you have so far?”

“A rich anonymous donor dropped a load in my bank account and told me to look into it. Said their mutant kid went missing for a few hours one day and came back acting weird.”

“Okay,” Peter says very, very slowly. “And what else?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing so far,” Wade says in frantic syllables. “I figure it’s because they’re kidnapping mutant kids and replacing them with some kind of hyper-realistic androids because these guys are grade A shit lords and they’re good at covering their tracks and I can’t wait to put a bullet in all of them.”

The whole thing does seem a little far-fetched. Peter knows that Scott is already biased against Deadpool, the way a lot of the X-Men are, and if the merc is going to show up to the mansion with some mutant-kidnapping conspiracy theory, they’re going to need  _ something  _ from him before they take him seriously. The unkind part of Peter’s brain doesn’t blame them. It wouldn’t be the first time Deadpool has made shit up, created a pattern out of nothing, and gone begging to heroes in a desperate attempt to make himself look good.

That was the old Deadpool, Peter tries to tell himself, not sure when the man in front of him stopped being “the old Deadpool” and started being Wade. And Peter was with him when he fought a bunch of these guys, and they were more brutal than the city’s usual gun-toting money-hungry pieces of shit. Wade wouldn’t invent a horrible conspiracy. Because if he did, Spider-Man would be so disappointed.

Wade is going to get to the bottom of this and Peter is going to help him. He’s going to listen to Wade, and they’re going to make a plan, and Peter is going to fix this. There are an infinite amount of bends printed into the skin on the back of Wade’s hands and Peter is going to fix this.

“So you think these guys are kidnapping kids?”

“Mutant kids,” Wade corrects. “Arguably the most precious kind of children.”

If Peter thought the lines of Deadpool’s mask were expressive, he’d never really paid enough attention to the man’s bare face. He lets his eyes trace the network of scars etched into the skin of Wade’s jaw. He looks so profoundly sad right now that something catches fire at the base of Peter’s throat and the scabs are all twisting downward around Deadpool’s laugh lines.

“It’ll be okay,” Peter says. “You’ll make this okay.”

“I don’t know,” Wade tells him. “Making things  _ less  _ okay is kind of the way I play the game, and this shit is serious business but no one believes me.”

“I mean, that’s not always true?” And Peter’s accidentally so close he can smell the diseased breathing coming out of the other man’s mouth. It’s not enough to make him move away.

“Can you name a time when it wasn’t?” Wade asks, and the holes and divots of his face look so harsh through the eyes of Spider-Man’s mask.

He’s looking at the grass and he’s looking at the dirt and he’s looking at Peter’s boots and Peter puts his gloved hand on Wade’s cheek. He lifts his head in Peter’s direction, face shadowed by his I Heart NY baseball cap, and Peter opens and closes his mouth three times without saying anything.

“I,” Peter begins, and the only part of Wade’s face he can see is the constellation of scabs printed around his lips. He forgets what he wants to say to Deadpool and he leans forward and presses their mouths together.

Spider-Man is still wearing the mask, so he can’t feel the exact texture of Wade’s skin against his own, and that’s the first thing that Peter thinks before the second is nonsensical panic. Wade is still, only just long enough for Peter to realize he’s doing an awful thing, and as he’s about to pull away, Wade’s hands sink into his shoulders and hold him in place.

The layer of the mask is thin between them and Peter can feel Wade catastrophically open his mouth against it, outlining the edges of Peter’s lips. His hands are bruising on Peter’s skin and Peter doesn’t know his mouth is open until he hears the horrible  _ clack  _ of his own teeth rising up to meet Deadpool’s. He wants to knot his gloves into Wade’s hair for one painful moment, before he knocks the cap off, revealing nothing but raw, bald skin. He moves his hands to the edges of Wade’s collarbones, applying a pressure that’s neither encouraging or discouraging, as Wade bites at fabric before pulling away. He’s breathing uncomfortably hot breaths onto the spit covering Peter’s mask.

“Your mask tastes like sweat,” Wade says, and Peter blushes all the way down to his throat.

Peter can now see that Wade’s face has gone flushed, making his wounds seem even angrier. His lips are pressed into such a thin line that it must be painful and he’s slightly moving his head back and forth, before he leans in and Peter thinks,  _oh my god he’s going to kiss me,_ like he wasn’t the idiot who kissed Deadpool first. 

“Wait,” Peter says, putting a hand on the middle of Wade’s chest, wondering when it got pressed so closely towards his own. “Stop.”

The hands on his shoulders loosen, but don’t let go. Fingers are drumming unrhythmically against the black pattern on Peter’s shoulders.

“I will. If you want me to. But I’m not sure if I want you to want me to, or if I don’t want you to want me to, or if I don’t want you to not want me not to.”

“Wade,” Peter says, trying to think about the guns strapped to Deadpool’s thighs and not the shy, fragile smile spread tightly across chapped lips, “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.”

“I don’t care,” Wade says, swallowing. “You can do whatever you want.”

The thing is, Peter really can’t do whatever he wants. Even if he could, he wouldn’t know what that is. His mouth burns.

The hands are still on his shoulders and Wade is looking at him with foggy eyes and Peter has never ever noticed that they were blue. He imagines them, too vividly, lighting up when he tells a joke or when he greets Spider-Man or when he occasionally swoops in to save the day. Right now they look so even and clear, a color Peter could never see reflected even in the bluest parts of the city sky.

He takes three steps backward, putting about a yard in between them.

“Let’s just,” Peter says, trying to run a hand over his face before it pauses in horror on top of damp fabric, “pretend this never happened.”

The I Heart NY hat has fallen over against the base of the tree and Wade’s whole body positions toward it like it’s the only anchor keeping him in this moment right now. That focal point was Peter’s clavicle until a moment ago, until he walked away.

“It’s okay. If I tell myself I imagined the whole thing, eventually it’ll be true,” Wade says, partly in a sigh and partly in a sing-song hum. He drums his fingers against the top of his skull and the cuffs of his sleeves are fraying and littered with holes, like he spends his down time pulling at tiny threads. Peter’s favorite hoodie looks the same way, with perfect holes for his thumbs to fit into.

Now Peter is staring at Deadpool’s hands. They lean over and pick the hat up from the ground.

“I should go,” Peter tells the expansive space of Deadpool’s back.

“Yeah,” Wade says, fixing the hat back over his head and pulling his hood over it too for good measure. “Probably, I guess. Me too.”

He starts moving away into the darker parts of the park and Peter watches him go until he can’t watch him any longer. When Wade is out of eyesight, Peter falls against the tree trunk and looks at the markings in the dirt. It’s all just circles and lines. Nothing about it makes any sense. Peter sighs and drags his hands over it, counting the bends and curves before he wipes them away.

**vi.**

For the next few weeks, Peter avoids Wade. Of course he does. He throws himself into extra shifts at work and various supervillains, flying from rooftop to rooftop and dangling off their edges like a gargoyle. He steers clear of the sound of gunfire when it’s mixed with loud, manic laughter. Wade lets it happen.

Deadpool is probably neck deep in his own bullshit and doesn’t have time to add Peter’s into the mix. Spider-Man was going to  _help him_ , Peter really was, but then his chest exploded at perfectly the wrong moment and now he’d rather crawl into the murky depths of the Hudson than look Wade in the face. His blue fucking eyes. 

Peter tries so hard to ignore his problems until they go away, but it always eats him whole. He’s easily distracted enough, and trying to clean up that drug ring down by the docks kept him busy for a while, but when all is said and done he still can’t let himself slow down or stop. That’s when the guilt crashes over him in hot, angry, longing waves. That’s when he thinks about that look spread across Wade’s mouth. Peter didn’t know scar tissue could look that soft.

Things are starting to fall in and out of focus in Peter’s brain. The tension in between his shoulders, the way Deadpool can always get a rise out of him, those nights over the last few weeks when he couldn’t sleep and he actually watched three seasons of Grey’s Anatomy around a lonely, pathetic tub of ice cream. A constant hum of  _ i like you, i like you, i like you _ bumping around in his skull. The fact that he doesn’t know the exact texture of what scarred flesh feels like against bare skin. And he could’ve known, if he wanted, but he didn’t let himself want. And now all that wanting is crashing up against him so hard and fast that he can’t websling away from it, no matter how much he tries.

And oh, is he trying. Peter’s life for the past years and years has been built on one poor decision after another and this feels like the worst of them all. But, he supposes, the heart wants what the heart wants, and his is rebelling against its scientific mind and craves an absolute fucking moron. A homicidal moron. He doesn’t know how he lets himself forget that part, always tacking it on as an afterthought. Wade is as morally bankrupt as he is annoying. Everything about him screams  _ do not touch,  _ but Peter can’t keep himself from remembering those intrusive hands locked around his shoulders. The hard curve of those clavicles. The deafening sound of their teeth knocking together, echoing through the layer of Spider-Man’s mask.

It’s late and he’s down by the river again. It’s been weeks since he’s been able to sleep right, maybe even months, so he’s just making sure he’s done an alright job cleaning up after his mess down here. No one seems to be around at this time of night and Peter is checking all the different doorways to different empty warehouses for hours before he hears gunshots bouncing off walls.

He almost doesn’t want to look into it, but his gut sinks, so he moves.

Crawling up the side of the building, he hears more shots and the squelching of open wounds and the sound of flesh smacking into concrete. He hangs through a window, looking down at the cause of the commotion. He hears him before he sees him, but he sees him soon enough.

“You guys just keep coming back like a fucking fungus, don’t you?” Deadpool is screaming, high-pitched, over the barrel of a gun. “And that’s coming from me.”

It’s the loudest gunshot Peter has ever heard.

When the body uncomfortably  _ thunks  _ against the floor, Peter decides to fall onto the scene. He doesn’t even say anything when he lands, there are no sound bites or quips on his lips, just loud intakes of air as he stares at Deadpool from across the warehouse.

There’s a handful of bodies on the floor and Deadpool is looking at them instead of Spider-Man. Peter reaches out and webs the gun from the other man’s hand, not sure why he’s even bothering, because he knows there’s more where that came from, and all the other guys are already dead anyway. The action doesn’t even cause Deadpool to twitch.

“I’m close, Spidey,” Deadpool says, breathing in and out, and Peter can see puffs of air escaping around fabric. The gun is still smoking on the floor where Peter threw it. “So fucking close.”

“Close to what?” Peter asks. 

Wade still isn’t facing Peter. It’s like he’s focused on the body in front of him, mesmerized by the pool of blood slowly expanding against the concrete.

“I thought I told you,” Wade says, looking at the mess on the floor. “Bad guys.”

“There are always bad guys,” Peter says, not moving towards Wade, but just standing still.  “Welcome to New York.”

He tries to play it as a joke, but the harsh angle of Deadpool’s shoulders doesn’t let him. So much hinges, Peter thinks, on the other man’s moods. Instability and recklessness are written into the jagged edges of his skin and if Peter wants to make this work, this working relationship or partnership or friendship or whatever else, he has to learn to navigate those rising and falling slopes. It’s so much harder than it needs to be, but isn’t everything with Wade?

“No one trusts me,” Deadpool says. “I’m tired of it.”

Peter wants to say something, he really does. It’s only a handful of words and they’re on the tip of his tongue. It isn’t right that the X-Men refuse to listen to Wade, after everything he’s done for them, which isn’t a lot on a good day but is more than nothing even on a bad one. Wade’s been so quiet lately, so unlike himself, and Peter hates that he knows that so much of that is  _ him.  _ He needs to make it right. Somehow. Peter needs to make everything right.

“I mean,” he says, “everyone has their reasons.”

Wade’s laugh sounds frenzied as it echoes off the barren walls.

“I expect a lot from you,” he tells Peter. “I guess it isn’t very fair.”

Everyone expects something from Peter. He isn’t surprised that Wade feels that way, but he is surprised to hear him say it. To hear anyone say it. Everyone thinks Peter is made up of solid red and blue gold, but Peter knows he’s built on instant coffee and sad paychecks and edges that are almost as jagged as Wade’s. Spider-Man is a menace, he’s just too afraid to admit it. Ask anyone who reads the Bugle.

“Life isn’t fair,” Peter tells Deadpool.

“You’ve told me that before,” Wade says. “I get the feeling you’ll tell me again.”

Peter’s feet start moving him across the floor. Deadpool is rooted in place and that one body just won’t stop bleeding. It’s starting to spread onto Wade’s shoes.

When Peter finally ends the space between them, he puts one hand on Wade’s shoulder and the other finds his ribcage. Peter is struck, in that moment, to realize how badly he wants to comfort Deadpool. The blood seeps into Spider-Man’s boots, and Peter just wants to hold Wade.

“Depends on how many times it takes before you listen,” Peter mumbles, leaning into black fabric.

“I don’t need to listen,” Deadpool says, no part of his body relaxing under Peter’s hands. “You’re telling me what I already know.”

Sighing, Peter moves back. He uses his grip and his strength to turn Wade around, to force him to look at him. At least, Peter hopes he’s looking at him. There’s really no way to tell.

“I find you exhausting,” Peter confesses, letting go of Wade’s shoulders. His brain is so dizzy from trying to keep up with his own thoughts and frantically locate Wade’s.

“Then why bother?” Deadpool asks. “Just walk away. Everyone does. And you’re pretty good at it.”

Unfortunately, Peter is pretty good at it. He walked out of a good life, with good opportunities. He walked out of Aunt May’s house as soon as he could just barely afford it. He walked out of his own apartment earlier in the night, falling out of his window to avoid being alone with his thoughts. Wade offered his friendship and his arms to Peter so many times, and Peter always left.

“Maybe they haven’t walked, maybe you’ve pushed them,” Peter says.

“Does it matter?” Deadpool asks, and now his arms are crossed defensively over his chest.

“To me,” Peter tells him, “it does.”

Deadpool told him he was fragile once and part of Peter hates him for how true that is. He’s only just decided that he wants to stay, but he can’t do that if Wade doesn’t want him to. It’s too much. Peter already feels like he’s worn to the bone.

“I can’t,” Wade says, taking a step back. “I don’t know if I can help it.”

He probably can’t and Peter doesn’t know how unfair it is to make him try. But Peter is brutal and he is selfish and he doesn’t want Wade to stop following him around and telling him he likes him and making awful jokes and letting Peter kiss him if he wants to. He wants to cut Wade in half and leave Deadpool behind. But it doesn’t work that way.

“No. I guess you can’t,” Peter says through the thin line of his mouth, crossing his arms to match Deadpool’s. He doesn’t tell Wade that’s okay. He doesn’t say,  _I want to help you_. 

“You know,” Deadpool says, bending his head down to point it at Peter, “I’m fucking tired of this hot and cold with you, Spider-Man.”

Whatever Peter had expected Wade to say, that certainly wasn’t it.

“Are you serious?” He asks, feeling that familiar rush of heat start to crawl up his neck. His arms close more tightly around himself. “What about you? One minute it’s all sunshine and rainbows and ‘I want to have your spider babies’ and the next you’re slitting random criminals’ throats in a back alley and you won’t even look me in the eye.”

“I have  _ never  _ looked you in the eye,” Wade says, and the mask draws such a hard line in his forehead when he says it. “Don’t you think that’s maybe part of the problem?”

That doesn’t seem like a fair thing to say, because Peter has really only looked Wade in the eye once. He could’ve looked more, if he wanted, but he didn’t realize what he wanted and now it’s too late, he guesses by the angry curves of Deadpool’s arms.

“It’s because you don’t trust me,” Wade continues before Peter can say anything.

Peter doesn’t trust anyone. In his weaker moments, he wishes he could.

“It’s because,” Deadpool continues, and Peter can hear the grinding of his teeth, “you think I’m fucking crazy.”

It’s like Peter’s mouth has finally caught up with his brain in the worst way. He’s so frustrated. Wade has been chasing after him for  _ years  _ and as soon as Peter slows down enough to finally let him catch up, Wade runs off in the opposite direction.

“Well,” Peter tells Deadpool, “that’s because you are fucking crazy.”

And that makes Wade punch him so hard all the air gets thrown out of him and his ears start to ring.

“Fuck you,” he bites.

“I guess I deserved that,” Peter says, uncurling himself and looking Wade in the face before he violently plants his heel in the middle of the other man’s chest. It knocks Deadpool a few steps back. “And I guess you deserved that, too.”

“For what?” Deadpool asks, with a cough so violent that Peter can see thin strands of spit fly out of his mouth through his mask.

“Are you honestly going to make me waste everyone’s time by answering that?”

Deadpool can do whatever he wants and it’s just not fucking fair. Peter has to keep his shit together twenty four seven, for his family and for his job and for his city. Spider-Man isn’t allowed to do anything except kick bad guys and make bad jokes and some days that’s enough but some days it isn’t. He can’t yell. He can’t explode. 

Deadpool can do whatever he fucking wants and he can talk to whoever he fucking wants about it, even if they don’t listen. Wade doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t seem to care about anything, and Peter doesn’t know how it took him so long to figure that out.

Wade punches him in the cheek. Spider-Man kicks him in the chest. Deadpool slips across the floor, dragging a trail of blood with his boots. The sight makes Peter’s stomach turn, so he hits Deadpool in the gut.

Neither of them are particularly suited to hand-to-hand combat, because Spider-Man jumps and dodges while Deadpool shoots and runs, but Peter hasn’t touched his web shooters and Wade hasn’t touched his revolvers. When he jabs his elbow into Peter’s throat, Peter can see the katanas shift on Deadpool’s back and he tries to tell himself to quit while he’s ahead. He smashes his forehead into Wade’s nose instead.

“You know,” Wade says in cracked syllables, “for a good guy, you can be so awful.”

Those words land in Peter’s chest harder than the steel-toed tip of Deadpool’s boot.

“For an awful guy,” Peter says after a sharp intake of air, “you could be good.”

Wade goes for his face again, and even though Peter’s spider sense goes off he doesn’t dodge the punch. The blow knocks him over and he’s sprawled out on the concrete with all the other bodies Deadpool’s taken down today.

“No,” Wade says, looming over Spider-Man. He raises his hand and Peter thinks he’s going to be hit with it, but instead it goes to Deadpool’s mask and rips it off. Wade’s face is so twisted. He’s barely recognizable as the man Peter met in the park all those weeks ago.

“Apparently I can’t be good,” he continues, spitting when he speaks. “You should know that. You don’t believe in me, you don’t trust me and I’m fucking crazy. You need to make up your fucking mind, Webs, because I’ll never be able to figure mine out.”

There are red threads lining the blue edges of Wade’s eyes and long purple shadows hanging under them. Every inch of him is vibrating in anger. Peter lays still beneath him.

“Wade,” he says, soft and quiet, as easily as expelling a breath.

The skin on Wade’s face seems to shift, opening and closing new wounds. It looks painful.

“Fuck you,” he says, lifting a boot over Peter’s throat, “Spider-Man.”

This time, Peter rolls out of the way and jumps to his feet. Deadpool’s moving faster and more wildly, slinging fist after first towards him. Peter keeps dancing around the punches.

It feels wrong, now, to hit Wade back. Maskless, this playing field has become uneven and Peter isn’t comfortable knowing he has the upper hand. Another solid hit lands on his face and he crouches down to swing his legs out and knock Deadpool over. 

“Wade, you need to calm down,” Peter says, trying to be rational for the first time in months. He can feel his eye start to swell shut from that mean right hook and he’s too fucking tired for this.

Wade is lying on the floor, spread out like a starfish, and his suit is getting darker and darker with blood and sweat.

“What’s your name?” Deadpool asks, looking up at dilapidated scaffolding.

“What?”

“Your. Name.” Wade turns to look at Peter, and Peter hates himself for how badly he still wants to trace the roughest parts of Wade’s jaw.

He almost says it. Really, he does. He thinks about it for too long, those two little syllables.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Peter says. The fabric of his mask has never felt so uncomfortable against his skin.

“And that’s what we knew you would say,” Deadpool says, rolling over with a sigh. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Wade says, shifting and crawling. He moves over and grabs Deadpool’s mask off the floor.

“That’s it?” Peter demands, watching the mask fall back into place. “Just ‘okay’ and you’re done now?”

“I’m done now,” Wade says, before finally turning to face Peter. “Wait,  _ I’m  _ done now? You know you started it, right?”

Peter lets out a huff of air and hopes it’s saliva and not blood that comes out with it.

“What are you, five?” he says. “Also you started it.”

“I threw the first punch,” Wade says, in a tone more level than usual, “but you definitely started it.”

Guilt is something that Peter is used to carrying strapped down his back but when Deadpool tries to drag it out of him it feels unfamiliar. It’s always somehow unexpected, like Peter thinks Wade thinks he can do no wrong, but Peter also knows that’s just not true and he fucks up a lot, but he also knows that no matter how bad he is, Wade will always be worse. The mercenary doesn’t have the fucking right to try and guilt  _ Peter, _ who Wade is supposed to think can do no wrong. It feels so much more complicated and so much angrier than Peter is used to and he has the bruises on his knuckles to prove it.

“Fine,” Peter says, walking slowly towards the door, even though they both know he could shoot a web and swing out the window in a second. “I’m leaving.”

“Be my fucking guest,” Wade says, laid out on his stomach and poking a body in the side. He’s humming a little tune to himself and kicking his legs back and forth to the rhythm of it. His hands go for the pockets of the corpse’s suit, searching for something, but Peter can’t be bothered to care what.

“Let’s not do this again,” he says, standing in front of the door. His shoulder aches and he stops to turn back and look at Wade. “At least you can regenerate. How long will it even take you to heal from this, anyway?”

Wade’s legs stop moving and he turns his jester-like stare away from the body to look up to Peter.

“I don’t know,” he tells Spider-Man as Peter walks away.

**vii.**

The next time, the police find Wade before Peter does.

It’s another abandoned warehouse, way way uptown, and Peter rushes into in unthinkingly when he sees the rainbow of red and blue police lights reflecting onto the wet pavement out front.

There’s a handful of X-Men inside, mostly kids that Peter doesn’t recognize striped in yellow and blue, and a very exhausted Cyclops looking down at a dark splatter on the warehouse floor. No one is around him, like he’s trying to barricade the kids from whatever red and horrible thing is growing on the ground. There are younger children too, shaking against orange shock blankets. Police officers are curled around them, questioning, and the X-Men are eying them all carefully.

“Logan always says that everyone’s too hard on him,” Scott says when Peter approaches. “Including himself. For the first time, I’m wondering if he might almost be right.”

Something in Peter tears when he realizes the broken pile of red and black and fleshy pink on the ground is Wade. He bends over, dragging a glove over peeled, wet skin.

“He’ll heal, of course,” Scott continues, “but I’m sure it won’t be fun. I’d stick around, but I need to make sure the kids are okay.”

Cyclops is looking down at Wade with a dark, clinical glare on his visor and a hard line on his mouth. Peter wishes Logan was here instead.

“And because you just don’t want to,” Peter spits, watching the graceful arch of cells begin to slowly knit across the white surface of what must be Wade’s femur.

“And because I just don’t want to. You have our number. Call us when he wakes up.”

The kids and the police and the X-Men begin to file out slowly. There’s also a row of men in sharp suits and handcuffs, and a chaotic array of medical tools in the corner. Peter knows he should be looking at the lines of gurneys, poking around and asking questions, praying that this is finally the end of Wade’s investigation. Every time Deadpool knocked down a group of suits, another would show itself a few weeks later. But he was close, that’s what he told Spider-Man the last time they spoke.

Instead, he’s fixated on Wade. Reason and logic don’t seem to follow Peter when Deadpool is around, and he hypnotically watches flesh move and grow against flesh while the X-Men are sweeping up behind him.

It’s not even clear what happened. Wade looks on the edge of eviscerated. Peter thinks of scalpels and lab coats, bright lights poking around in Wade’s insides. Too curious bad guys with a sick fascination on mutants, trying to figure out, like so many have, how horribly Deadpool can be ripped apart and put back together.

Peter inevitably does the stupid thing and brings Wade home. He wraps Wade’s arms around his neck, webbing him at the ragged edge of wrists to keep him in place, remembering the last time he webbed Wade up like this, months and months ago, to stop him from killing the fucking bastards who did this to him. Peter almost wishes he’d let Deadpool finish that night, as he feels the back of his suit fill with blood where Wade is pressed against it. He wishes he’d trusted him.

The journey home takes twice as long with the extra weight. Peter finds himself tripping against the skyline, hoping the entire way that Deadpool will stir, say something awful, or even let his mangled hands slip from Peter’s neck to places they shouldn’t go. A low hum of hot, ugly breath against his shoulder would feel like relief right now. None of these things happen. Wade’s body just thumps lifelessly against his own as Peter leaps and dives.  

When he gets back to his apartment, he crawls through the window he always leaves open for himself and drops into his bedroom. He looks at the broken fingers around his neck and then at the bed and then back at the hands and decides the floral couch Aunt May gifted him two years ago is more comfortable, anyway. He lays the blanket she crocheted him over top of Wade and goes to the kitchen to make coffee, knowing it’s going to be a long night.

Bringing a chipped mug back in with him, he sits on the floor in front of the couch and turns on the tv, putting on the Home Shopping Network because anything else seems like too much effort. There are bright stripes of manicured women propped against a beige background and they’re rolling through selections of jewelry. Peter doesn’t really drink the coffee, but the cup feels warm and secure in his hands.

Even though he doesn’t watch Wade regenerate, he can hear the wet sound of sinew knitting back together behind him. It’s a slow, hostile noise drumming against Peter’s ears. The harsh crack of bones snapping into place behind him. Skin squirming against skin.

The women on the tv are going over a conditioner that makes your hair smoother and shinier, and maybe two or three hours have passed when Peter feels the couch shift behind him.

“Woah,” Wade rasps, like every syllable is hurting him to speak, but Peter almost thinks it would hurt him more not too, “wicked hangover.”

A rush of relief crashes into him so hard and fast he goes dizzy. The room starts to shift beneath the eyes of Spider-Man’s mask.

“I made coffee,” Peter whispers, staring at the reflective pools of red moving in his half empty mug. He made coffee so long ago, it’s probably all gone cold.

“Jus’ dump it into my exposed lower intestine,” Wade says, and Peter hears a  _ squelch  _ like he’s poking around at his own insides. “Mm, open guts absorb caffeine so good.”

“Please don’t do that right now,” Peter says, still looking at the coffee.

“Don’ do wha?” Wade asks with an exhausted throat. He does sound hungover, except for all the raw noises his regenerating body is making for him.

“I don’t know,” Peter responds. “Don’t touch it. Or, y’know, don’t joke about it.”

Deadpool releases a long, slow wheeze.

“Askin’ me not to joke would be more painful than this actually is,” he says. “And good lord does it sting.”

A sharp crunch of bone matter regrowing echoes Wade’s sentiment. He groans against it.

“Fine,” Peter tells his coffee mug, “but don’t pick at it.”

“Yes, Spider-Mom.”

Peter isn’t any good at comforting people. He’s awkward to the point where it’s just about unbearable and he would take the Sinister Six any day over talking about feelings. He keeps looking from his drink to the tv, honestly impressed by how lovely that woman’s hair is, as Wade slurs messily behind him. Peter hums every now and then in agreement with whatever Wade is mumbling and that seems to be good enough for Wade.

“So,” Peter says, after his mouth has finally found its courage, “coffee?”

“Yes please,” Wade mumbles. “Caffeinate me, Cap’n.”

Peter extends his own mug behind him, stone cold and half empty, not even turning his head. He feels fingers -- actual fully formed fingers -- brush against his own as they greedily accept the offered beverage. Wade’s slurp is loud and annoying, just like his everything else is. It makes Peter smile.

“Ack,” Wade spits. “Cheap coffee. Gross.”

“Sorry,” Peter says, wondering what Wade’s favorite kind of coffee is.

“I’ll forgive you,” Wade says, sounding sleepy, “but only because you’re cute.”

Looking down at his gloved hands, Peter really wishes he still had that mug to stare at. The couch starts to rumble behind him, like Wade is more so in the land of the living than not, and Peter wonders when he’ll actually have the guts to look back at him.

“Ugh,” Wade groans. “I had a rough night, I take it?”

“I mean, I wasn’t there for most of it,” Peter says. “But it seems like you really did.”

“Do you think it was cool?” Deadpool asks. “Like, did it look like I was being really cool?”

Nothing about the swirling blend of reds and pinks against concrete looked cool to Peter. Thinking about the fluorescent glow of warehouse lights reflecting against Wade’s shiny insides makes Peter’s stomach turn over and over again.

“Yeah,” he says around the lump in his throat, “you were being cool.”

“Sweet,” Wade says as the couch creaks against him. He’s silent for a few moments, other than that obnoxious slurping.

Peter gets up to make more coffee, moving towards the kitchen, because his hands are feeling twitchy and he’s trying to keep them from doing something stupid like reaching out and stroking Wade’s misshapen, bald head. He uses that old Captain America mug that MJ bought him because she thought it was really, really funny. He hasn’t called her in ages, he thinks, realizing that he probably should.

When he comes back from the kitchen, he can’t help but stare. Deadpool’s suit is in tatters around his torso and he’s cradling Peter’s coffee mug so delicately in both hands. His mask is still on, rolled up to his nose so his mouth is exposed, and his skin is still moving and growing and regrowing all over his body. Peter just stands there, in the doorway, looking.

Wade’s head turns from the hasty periodic table Peter taped to the wall during his junior year of college to Peter.

“Wait,” he says, “where am I? Why are you here?”

Wade sounds like he’s becoming more and more conscious, and more and more aggressive along with it. That soft, slurring tone is gone and something cruel starts forming in its wake. He looks feral, caged against his own skin.

Peter doesn’t really know how to answer him, because his brain is entirely occupied by the terrible, beautiful slope of tendons slowly reconnecting Wade’s shoulders to the base of his throat.

“You keep coming back,” Deadpool says.

Still standing in the threshold, Peter stupidly nods at the words. Deadpool’s mask and mouth look sharp against the soft spaces of his cheeks.

“Yeah,” Peter breathes, “you need help, Wade.”

Wade is quiet in response.

“You’re a sick fuck,” he eventually says.

It makes Peter laugh, that really ugly laugh he does when he’s really frantic or really amused or really afraid. When the noise melts into a perfect high-pitched wheeze, Deadpool’s shoulders relax. Skin starts to slowly bloom across them. Peter takes three steps into the room.

“I’ll give you the choice here,” Peter says, moving to sit cross-legged in front of the tv, facing the couch. “Do you want to be the pot or the kettle?”

Wade puts one arm against the back of the sofa and uses the other to swirl the mug in his hand.

“I think I have to be the pot,” he says, “because yours makes really shitty coffee.”

“It’s the kettle, actually. I don’t have a coffee pot. It’s instant.”

Wade groans in response. Peter rolls up the edge of his mask and takes a long, bitter sip from his mug.

“That’s terrible,” Wade tells him, frowning at his own drink. “You really are a messed up dude. My friendly neighborhood sick fuck.”

“Pet names already? I’m blushing,” Peter says between crooked lips.

“I mean,” Wade says as a canine tooth reaches out to worry a chapped piece of skin, “this is what, our third or fourth date? And you’ve got me all exposed and vulnerable on your ohso lovely couch right now.”

“Shut up,” Peter says, actually blushing now. It feels particularly bright and warm around the visible space of his jaw. “Wait, are you counting the time I kicked the shit out of you as a date?”

“That’s real cute, Webs. I think you’ll find that  _ I _ kicked the shit out of  _ you _.” 

“Wade, that is absolutely not the point.”

“He says like someone who had the shit kicked out of him.”

Peter is smiling, and he knows he should mention the angry heel of Wade’s boot that night and how close it came to crushing his windpipe. He doesn’t.

“At least I don’t currently look like someone who had the shit kicked out of him,” he says instead. “Are we gonna talk about that?”

Wade is now sprawled across his couch and he’s got his arm pulled at a funny angle as he’s trying to pick at a healing scab on his elbow. He looks rough, rougher than usual, and Peter has never seen this much of his skin before.

“What’s there to talk about? I came in, beat up bad guys, saved some chilluns. The X-Men showed up at some point, after I did all the messy shit. Classic X-Men.”

“You, um,” Peter adds, “you died.”

“Yup,” Wade says, making a loud pop around the p. “That happens sometimes.”

They’re not going to talk about that, apparently. There’s about a hundred different conversations hanging heavy in the air around them, and Peter and Wade are taking turns gracefully avoiding them all. The space around the couch is quiet, punctuated with the sound of coffee drinking.

“Boy,” Wade eventually says, peeling a long yellow layer of dead skin and dropping it onto Peter’s carpet, “I bet you’re really regretting your life choices right now.”

Peter is looking at the freshly re-opened sore on Deadpool’s arm and it shines back at him, gooey and pink, before it drips blood onto Aunt May’s quilt.

“I don’t know,” Peter says, “I’ve done a lot of dumb shit in my time. Letting you crash while you heal is maybe top ten, but definitely not top five.”

“It’s real sweet of you,” Wade says, stretching against the couch. “Letting me chill here and bleed all over your stuff.”

“What are friends for?”

Something ugly and dopey and fond forms on Wade’s mouth. His lips pull back over his gums, showcasing crooked teeth, and something equally ugly and fond starts to bubble in Peter’s own chest.

“Um,” Peter says to the line of blood creeping down Wade’s skin, “how are you feeling, anyway?

“Ugh,” Wade answers, shifting gooeily around on Peter’s couch. “Regenerating spinal matter is the worst. Always holds me back.”

“Oh my god,” Peter says around the loud gasp of laughter that escapes his throat without his permission. “That was awful. I’m going to be sick.”

“The open abdominal cavity didn’t do that for you but a really solid joke did?”

“I don’t know if I’d say solid,” Peter responds. “It was pretty spineless.”

“If my legs were functioning, I would walk away from you right now.”

“I hate it when he leaves, but I love watching him go,” Peter says with a horrible smile. Wade smiles back.

“Okay, you’ve charmed me again. If my arms were functioning, I would hug you.”

Peter shifts awkwardly around in his spot before moving closer to the couch, eyeing the gelatinous surface of Wade’s biceps. 

“They work for coffee,” he says.

“Of course they work for coffee. Everything works for coffee.” Wade says, waving his mug around and dripping liquid onto his chest with the enthusiastic movement. The dark coffee slides down his thorax, outlining the slow closing of the Y-incision on  his torso. Peter reaches out to catch the drop as it falls.

“Hands off the merchandise, Spidey,” Deadpool says in a gravelly voice, pressing further back into the cushions.

“Sorry,” Peter answers, slowly moving his hand away from the vivid lines. “I hate to say it, but it is fascinating. Your healing factor.”

“Please don’t go mad scientist on me right now. I have had my fucking fill of that today.”

“I don’t know, it’s just more graceful than I thought it would be. How perfectly your skin can knit back together.”

“I wouldn’t really say perfectly, now would I?” Wade adds, poking a finger into one of the many dips and curves on his forearm.

“It’s pretty incredible, is all. What your body can do. It’s...hypnotic to watch.”

“Cool it, Dr. Frankenstein. Geez, I bet you were that weird kid who cut worms in half to watch them grow into new worms.”

“Honestly, yeah. I was,” Peter says, not even having the decency to feel embarrassed about it because he is a  _ scientist _ and conducts  _ experiments_, thank you very much. 

“Good thing you didn’t become Worm-Man. The irony would be awful, not to mention how much the powers would suck,” Wade says. “But, seriously, I thought you would be the bug-spokesperson or something.”

“Hey, I was literally a child? And I haven’t squished a bug in years. The last one was the pretty little radioactive lady who sank her fangs into the back of my hand, god rest her soul.”

“That’s actually how you got your powers? Wild. What were you even like before you were Spider-Man?”

Peter looks at the floral print of his couch and breathes a loud breath. He was selfish and small and an idiot who was smart enough to know better. Peter Parker was confused and pathetic and filled up with too much anxiety for such a skinny kid. He was loved and supported. So many opportunities were available to him, and he was smart enough to have the whole world within reach of his spindly fingers. Then one tiny set of fangs got to him and responsibility broke his back with its weight and now he’s in the one-bedroom apartment he can barely afford while an immortal man bleeds all over his couch and Peter desperately wants to hold his hand.

“I dunno,” Peter says, “a sad nerd.”

“You’re still a sad nerd,” and Wade says it so fondly that Peter smiles.

“It’s hard. You know?” Peter says, letting his hands play with the edges of the blanket he draped over Deadpool. “Doing the right thing all the time and everything. It was easier to just be a sad nerd. I just, sometimes I hate being Spider-Man.”

Wade is quiet for a moment and then he reaches his hand out, flaked with drying blood, and wraps it around Peter’s. It feels warm and sticky, even through Peter’s glove.

“That’s okay,” Wade says, smiling. “I always hate being me.”

He doesn’t even sound sad about it, it’s like he’s just stating a fact. He’s sad for  _Peter_. His fingers are tight around Peter’s own, and something in their grip says _ we understand. _

“We’re pathetic,” Peter tells him.

“Pity party of two,” Wade says. “Sign me up.”

Peter should stop letting Wade get away with insulting him, but it’s nice in its own weird kind of way. If anyone else went around calling Peter fragile and pitiful, he would probably knock their teeth out. There is something about Deadpool, though, that when he says it it isn’t cruel or brutal, the way the man can often be, but honest. In the weirdest way, Wade thinks of them as equals and Peter finds this more flattering than he should.

At the end of the day, they’re both awful. Just, in different ways, maybe. Peter desperately doesn’t want people to hate him. Wade just brokenly accepts it.  Despite everything else, they’re just two pathetic idiots sharing coffee at 6 in the morning. At least, Peter thinks, we can be pathetic together. 

“Listen,” Peter says around the lump in his throat, “am I allowed to kiss you again?”

Wade’s head is bent awkwardly off his neck and Peter watches the way his jaw falls open and then snaps shut.

“No,” he says, “I really don’t think we heard him correctly.”

“Sorry,” Peter tells him. “I probably should have asked you last time.”

“Okay, but did any part of me imply that I wasn’t into it?”

“Well, your fist kind of did the next time we bumped into each other when you smashed it into my face,” Peter tells the rhododendrons printed on his couch.

“That was…” Wade begins, before spending a good few seconds pressing his mouth into a tight line, biting down hard against the inside of his lips. “I don’t know what that was. I don’t think I want to think about it. Is that okay?”

“I mean, I hit you back, so I guess that makes us even.”

“Maybe it makes us even, but I really don’t think that makes it okay,” Wade says. “But I also really don’t think I care.”

It’s usually hard to catch Peter off-guard, but Wade always manages to do it. His body moves faster than Peter’s eyes can follow and Peter has a lap full of sticky, bruised flesh before he realizes what’s happening. 

Their mouths press together with an uncomfortable enthusiasm that’s somehow slower and less desperate than it was that night in the park. It’s warm and soft and all of the skin on skin contact is making Peter’s stomach fill with so many butterflies that he thinks he might be sick. His brain is firing off panicked, nonsensical sensations, but not in the way it usually does when he’s in danger. Because he’s not in danger. He’s sprawled across his apartment floor, in the small crevice between his couch and his coffee table, and he’s kissing Wade. It’s just Wade. Peter fixes his fingers to the sharp edge of the other man’s jaw, and wonders how long he can keep them there.

The answer, as it turns out, isn’t nearly long enough. As Peter breaks his mouth open and shifts his hips to better accommodate Wade’s, large hands find his shoulders and they push rather than pull.

“You know what, I actually think I can’t do this,” Wade says, moving away. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

Peter finds his skin missing the uneven texture of Wade’s. The grooves and bumps are so foreign they’re almost unpleasant, but Peter likes the way his fingers can skate over them, dipping in and out.

“What,” Peter asks. He’s feeling angry and petulant, because he somehow manages to be continually denied whatever it is that he wants. 

“I’m a bad guy,” Wade answers, eyes of his mask pointed toward the millimeter of exposed skin on Peter’s neck, “and you’re this fake person. It’s not fair.”

Peter doesn’t really know what to say to that. In a lot of ways, Deadpool is right. Wade is a lean, mean killing machine and Peter is an idealized version of himself, striped so thickly in red and blue he almost forgets what his own skin looks like underneath. He’s seen Wade murder people. Lots of people. He’s seen him laugh while he does it.

“You’re not a bad guy,” he finally says.

“Gee, I guess that means my Avengers invite’s just been lost in the mail for I dunno, half a dozen years,” Wade responds. “Face it, we all know I’m a menace. You’ve said it yourself.”

Peter has never said that about Wade. Or, if he has, he doesn’t remember saying it. He really, really hopes he hasn’t.

“Bad is just relative.” Peter says, “Or something. I don’t know. I don’t think I care anymore.”

“That’s a lie and we both know it. Nihilism doesn’t really match your outfit, Spidey.”

“I just...” Peter begins, looking at that old poster instead of looking at Wade. His hands have moved to his side, where Wade is still sitting closely. “I think I like you more than I don’t like you.”

Wade laughs that horrible laugh. It reminds Peter too much of warehouse floors and pools of red. 

“Well, okay, this is gonna get real awkward real quick because I like you  _ a lot  _ more than I don’t like you.”

“Does it matter? I’m a mess and you’re a disaster and do we even care at this point? Do you seriously care?”

“Yeah,” Wade says to the loose stitches of Aunt May’s blanket, “I think I do.”

Peter rubs a frustrated hand over his face and it brushes against the edge of his mask, moving it half an inch further up. He sighs.

Deadpool’s own mask is now fixed on that quilt and Wade parts his mouth to breathe out, “I could kill you, y’know.”

It seems like such a pointless thing to say, but Wade’s shoulders are bent like the words are weighing heavily against them.

“Anyone could kill me,” Peter answers, reaching out and smoothing his hands across those clavicles despite his better judgement. “We don’t all have your level of resilience.”

Wade doesn’t even laugh in response, just lets out a breath of air through his nose that Peter can’t locate between annoyed and amused. 

“That’s a terrible argument.”

“Your argument is a terrible argument,” Peter snaps back.

It’s unfair, because of course it is. Why is it that when Peter finally tries to give him the time of day that Wade is having doubts? Peter thinks he didn’t even really like the guy much until those ugly hands reached out and offered him the worst pizza of his life. He wonders, momentarily, when Wade realized that he liked Peter. A dark part of his brain tells him that Wade doesn’t actually like  _ Peter _ at all. And that’s why Peter shouldn’t let himself kiss him.

“Why is this the one time you don’t want to talk about how I’m murderous scum?” Wade asks, sharp.

“Why is this the one time you do wanna talk about it?”

“Gee, Boy Wonder, I don’t know. Because it seems really fucking relevant right now?”

“And what if I tell you it isn’t?”

“You’d be lying.”

Peter can’t really argue with that. He probably is lying. Right now, he just feels tired and stupid and he can’t stop thinking about the warmth of Wade’s chest.

“It’s no secret that I would be happier if you removed the ‘murderous’ from your job description, but the scum part I am completely happy with. Ecstatic, even.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t look very cute on you right now.”

“I’m not kidding. You’re weird and gross and I like you.”

Wade is so, so quiet. Peter can hear the beginning of rush hour traffic on the streets below and is finally starting to realize how much time has passed. 

“Really?” Wade finally asks in such a hoarse voice.

“Yeah,” Peter says around the smallest smile. “Really, really.”

Wade doesn’t react. The tv drones on behind them and cars outside start honking at one another. A pigeon has landed on Peter’s fire escape and Peter decides he needs to untangle himself from where he feels trapped against the sofa.

Coffee mugs have been knocked over onto their sides and small inky spots have dotted themselves around Peter’s carpet like a crime scene. He moves to wipe them away with his hands.

“I’m done now,” Peter tells Wade, letting coffee soak into his gloves, “No more feelings today. Emotions have officially been turned off.”

“Good,” Wade quietly responds. “Think I’ve spilled my guts enough for one day.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, voice flat, “you look dead on your feet.”

He almost wishes he hadn’t said that, because now his thoughts are all red again. Deadpool’s suit is in tatters around Wade’s waist and Spider-Man’s is firmly stuck to Peter’s and everything is always red between the two of them.

“My healing superpowers work better when I’m asleep, anyway,” Wade says. “Or something. I don’t fucking know.”

Peter doesn’t fucking know either.

“Bedtime it is. I’m the first door on the left if you need anything. I’d offer you the bed, but you look like you’ve got your spot picked out pretty nicely,” Peter says, trying to gesture toward bloodstains in the most polite way possible. Aunt May is going to have to crochet him a new blanket. With any luck, he can get it three Christmases from now.

“I’ll help you burn the couch tomorrow,” Wade says around a yawn. 

There’s not much point in it, Peter thinks, because someone will start bleeding on it again at some point.

“First door on the left,” Peter repeats. “Seriously. Bother me if you need to.”

“Such a smooth talker. As if Spidey would let us in his bed.”

Sometimes, talking to Wade is like bashing your head into a wall over and over again. Peter can’t figure out how to prove to him that he does actually like him. _I like you._ Peter believed Wade when he said that to him. Maybe, the problem is, Peter only realized he liked Deadpool when Wade realized that Spider-Man never would.

He’s starting to get a headache. He’s been awake too long.

“It’s a twin. Only come in if you want to cuddle,” Peter says around a series of huffs, before he trudges to his bedroom and slams the door shut. He almost instantly opens it again, leaving it halfway ajar. 

Hastily peeling himself out of his suit, he stumbles toward the bed only barely registering that Wade could easily poke his head in at any point and see his face. Peter trusts him not to, crawls under the covers and passes out.

Wade is still on the couch in the afternoon when Peter wakes up, sprawled across it and snoring, completely healed. He isn’t when Peter gets home from work late that night, but runs into Spider-Man three days later, bringing four pizzas and a toothy grin and a hard edge to his suit that says  _ we’re not talking about it. _ Peter smiles around his ninth slice and watches Wade wave one hand against the skyline while he shoves two pieces at once into his mouth with the other. Peter doesn’t try to kiss him again, but spends most of the night thinking about it.

**viii.**

Weeks stretch past and Peter lets them move, awkward ticks on his calendar reminding him of harsh lines stamped into a scarred torso. He applies for a new job, he calls Mary Jane, and the bruises that perpetually manage to reform around his eyes feel soft, well rested. The frenzied midnights and mid-mornings and mid-afternoons of the past year settle on his shoulders and he lets himself acknowledge the mess his life’s become.

In the small hours of the morning, he’s still out punching criminals, but he tries to give himself an extra hour’s sleep when he brokenly crawls back in through his window. And he’s still seeing Wade, but he tries not to actively provoke the man or drag his ugly feelings out from where he keeps them hidden.

Wade always greets him with a smile, a half turn of his masked mouth, but while he talks and talks, he says very little that Peter actually listens to.

In its own weird way, weekly midnight pizza has become a ritual. It doesn’t happen every week, and it’s usually not at midnight, but it is mostly pizza. They eat more-than-a-dollar-a-slice pizza behind a dumpster in the small hours after Peter’s nightly patrol almost every week and Wade brings him Domino’s one time at 8 a.m. after the Avengers somehow managed to recruit them both into a fight against a gigantic slime creature. Captain America didn’t seem too happy to see Deadpool at the scene, and Iron Man even less so, but Wade helped Black Widow detonate the necessary explosives and everyone went home relatively happy, unharmed and covered in monster guts.

When they got to the rooftop off 11th, Peter scoffed at the bright colors on the box because he would honestly prefer the cardboard-y pizza from that first night over  _ Domino’s, _ but spends that morning covered in goo and garlic butter anyway. They sat on the ledge, Spider-Man dangling his feet off it, swinging them back and forth,   
and he stole all of Wade’s chicken wings. Wade started getting mad about it, but then Peter promised not to judge him for dipping his pizza in barbecue sauce and all was forgiven.

It feels simple. Easy. But, Peter, the martyr that he is, doesn’t think easy is good enough. Wade never takes his mask all the way off in between mouthfuls of food and Peter doesn’t have the right to call him out on it. Easy is always too good to be true and Peter has seen enough supervillains rise from the dead to know this.

Returning to the more solitary aspects of his life seems necessary but hollow. He watches two more seasons of Grey’s Anatomy in two weeks and there are still blood stains on his couch. They spread out in strange blotches, echoing the strange space of the skin that left it there.

It’s a Tuesday night when he gets to the episode with the mass shooting, sighing to himself around the cracker crumbs stuck to his lips as the credits roll. It weirdly compels him to put the suit back on and crawl to the top of his apartment building.

Peter lives in a rougher area of New York, for more reasons than one, and when he’s feeling sluggish and unmotivated he can usually just sit on the roof and wait until he hears someone scream. Swoop down, help them out and crawl back to his couch feeling like he’s done something. This doesn’t happen a lot, because Peter rarely lets himself be selfish, but tonight he’s hungry and tired and it’s about 5 in the morning and he’s already patrolled today, so he climbs up the fire escape steadily.

It’s mid-July and boiling hot, even at this hour, and it’s windier on the roof than it is down below, but it’s all steamy air blowing across him. He knows that when the sun starts to rise it’ll only get hotter. The sky is a smear of orange against expansive black, and Peter counts four planes and three stars blinking up against the slight blue edges of the rising day.

“Shit,” he hears someone say across the building. “Shit, fuck.”

The figure moves and trips and falls, smashing its masked face against the gravelly surface of the roof. Peter stands there, staring at the curves of the red and black suit from where it’s collapsed.

“Deadpool?” Peter asks, confused and annoyed and maybe a little of something else. “Wade?”

The figure doesn’t react at first, but Peter knows it must be Wade, because it’s always Wade.

“Does this look bad?” Wade asks, still face down, mumbling into the concrete. “This probably looks really, really bad.”

“You mean you, eating shit on a rooftop, or you eating shit specifically on my rooftop?” Peter asks him, moving closer. “You know, where I live.”

Deadpool hums, frantic and high. “Serendipity, huh?”

“Were you watching me?”

Peter was maskless in his living room no more than twenty minutes ago, crying at the tv screen and tracing rusty brown spots on his couch. The realization doesn’t make his blood run as cold as he thought it would.

“No,” Wade says, firmly, moving to sit up. “No. They wanted to, but we didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

There’s a strange cocktail of emotions running through Peter’s veins. He thought they were pretending nothing ever happened, accepting they would never talk about it, but Wade is here and he’s probably got a split lip and there are two pizza boxes and four empty beer bottles sitting next to him.

He knows that Wade knows there is a line, but seeing the mercenary back here, at home, makes him realize Wade still wants to bend that line.

“Then why are you here?” Peter asks, surprised to hear the words leave him so quietly. Wade doesn’t answer for a few minutes, and Peter thinks the wind has entirely carried them away. The black of Wade’s gloves are shiny with pizza grease and Wade is looking down at them.

“Best pizza in this whole damn town,” he says, “three blocks down from this building.”

Peter knows the place. It’s a total dive and the owner is a fat, loud but kind old man. He’s been to Romeo’s several times and the pizza fucking sucks.

“Get the chicken parm next time,” Peter tells him, sitting down cross-legged next to Wade. “It tastes less like plastic cheese and glue.”

His hands go for one of the boxes, knocking it open to reveal a pie that’s either half gone or still half there, depending on which one of them you ask. He reaches in for two slices with one hand and rolls his mask up with the other.

“I’m tired of your impossibly high pizza standards. I bet you’re not even Italian.”

“Says the Canadian dude with the weird fixation on Mexican food.”

“I have never met a chimichanga I didn’t like,” Wade declares. “I’m a connoisseur, not a snob.”

“That’s why they call me Snob-Man. Snober-Man?” Peter pauses, tapping a gloved finger against his exposed chin. “How does that scan?”

“Solid 2 out of 10,” Wade tells him, picking up a beer and taking a deep swig. “Not your best work. Sorry, Webs, but thanks for playing. Try again next week.”

“Thanks for the feedback,” Peter says, biting into the crust. “You know how well I deal with constructive criticism.”

Wade is silent for a moment before the words make him laugh around the drink in his mouth and he starts spluttering a little. The beer drips down the front of his suit and Peter wonders if the scar of the Y-incision is still visible on Deadpool’s chest.

“You and me both, babe,” Wade says, lifting his bottle in a mock toast. “Nothing to see here, folks. Just a couple of well adjusted dudes hanging out, being all normal and well adjusted and stuff.”

Peter hums around the sharp dough in his mouth. It scratches his cheek as he chews.

“Speaking of well adjusted,” he says, “you come here often?”

Wade’s body stalls and his fingers start tracing the bottleneck. Peter is annoyed with himself for asking. If he keeps scratching at this scab, it’ll never heal over.

“Um,” Wade says, “I feel like I should call my lawyer before I answer that.”

“As if any decent lawyer in this city would answer your call.”

“You forget I am stupid filthy loaded,” Wade says, relaxing his body and reaching out to grab himself another slice. “But, honestly, I don’t know. I gotta say, you seem kind of alarmingly unconcerned to find me here, y’know, at your place.”

He seems to think Peter would be more annoyed than he is. Instead, Peter’s just munching away into pizza, happy for a free meal.

“So you do come here often,” Peter says, more warmly than he intended to.

“Ugh,” Wade groans around the cheese he’s snapping in half. “Stop being observant. Do not tell me what your spider eyes see.”

“You. At my apartment building. In the sketchy hours of the morning,” Peter tells him. “They see you.”

Wade swallows with a loud noise. It reminds Peter of Central Park, and the exposed skin of his jaw is starting to get very, very warm. 

Wade takes another bite, smacking his lips together as he does. The whites of his mask are fixed on the food in front of him.

“We’re getting dangerously domestic here, Webs,” Wade says, spitting around the words, as Peter looks down at his own pizza.

“Of course,” Peter answers, biting in and mashing tomato sauce against his gums. “What’s more domestic than two dudes in spandex sitting on a rooftop, gorging themselves at 5 a.m.? The true American dream.”

“Kevlar, sweetie,” Wade corrects. “We’re not all starving artists here.”

Peter’s not starving, but some days he’s closer to it than others. He hums around the pizza in his mouth, thinking about all the food he owes Wade by now, realizing it must be a lot, and hoping that Wade never calls him out on it. Peter thinks he never will.

For a guy who talks so fucking much, there sure are a lot of things Wade doesn’t say. Peter wishes Deadpool wasn’t wearing the mask right now. This feels weirdly too personal for it. The memory of the only other time he’d seen Wade anywhere near his apartment is fresh in his mind, and he’s eager to replace it.

He knows it’s been a few weeks since the whole Wade-dying-gruesomely-thing happened, but he’s still wondering if the other man is okay. He knows the answer is probably no and isn’t sure what to do about it. He wonders how many times Wade has died since then.

“So,” Peter asks, slowly, “how have you been?”

It seems like a stupid thing to say, because Spider-Man saw Deadpool four days ago, but then they had just spent a few minutes laughing and chatting about Iron Man’s new suit,  _ the guy just keeps building them bigger and bigger, Webs, we all know he’s compensating for something, _ and it was different. They weren’t here, on Peter’s roof, together. Peter didn’t ask him how he was, if he was okay, just slapped a hand on his shoulder as he left and said _stay outta trouble, chief._

“I dunno,” Wade says. “Just been keeping on keeping on. Fighting the good fight and all that.”

“Have you,” Peter begins in small words, “have you talked to the X-Men?”

Peter never did call them that night.

Wade brings his knees up close to his chest before crossing his arms over them.

“I mean,” he says, “I was over at the X-Palace the other day for a debriefing, har har, or whatever and they told me the situation was taken care of. If that’s what you mean.”

That is what Peter meant. He wonders if they apologized to Wade for not believing him. Peter still hasn’t.

“Yeah,” he says. “They took care of it?”

“S’what they told me,” Wade says, chewing loudly. “And I told them good, because this shit is above my fucking pay grade, and asked when I would get my yellow-and-blues in the mail. Logan responded by only stabbing me like twice, which was cute. I think we’re bonding.”

“What can I say,” Peter tells him, “you must be catching.”

Peter is smiling, forgetting that his mask is pulled up and Wade can see it, until Wade is smiling too. Big and toothy. He has basil stuck in between his two front teeth.

“After the first stab, I started chatting some shit and got all mad because I was _right_ and the X-Men were being useless, as they do, so Wolvie kicked me out on my sorry ass like our sad, violent, immortal bromance means nothing to him. Then he told me not to darken his doorstep with my ugly mug again unless I was dragging along the Webhead with me or the cash I owe him.”

“What?” Peter asks, blinking behind his mask.

“Yeah, I may or may not owe Wolverine two grand,” Wade answers. “Canadian dollars, but who’s counting?”

“Wade.”

“Okay, so maybe he said you’re slightly less annoying than I am and the kids, like, actually respect you,” Wade responds. “Allegedly.”

“Wow. That’s high praise, coming from him,” Peter says. “But why is Wolverine giving you messages for me?”

Wade turns to look at him, and his lower lip is jutting out in a way that it looks like it thinks Peter is being an idiot.

“Because he knows we hang out?”

Of course Wolverine knows they hang out, everyone probably knows by now. Peter’s about two months too late to deny it, even if he wanted to. Which, somehow, he doesn’t.

“Oh,” he says, “okay.”

As Peter goes in for another slice, Wade reaches up with his free hand to scratch at a bit of skin under his mask. It trails a line of sauce against his cheek. Peter doesn’t even know how Wade has already managed to get grease and food all over his gloves, and he lets out a little snort at the sight.

“You’re ridiculous,” he says, resisting the hook in the bottom of his belly that’s compelling him to wipe the tomato sauce away. He taps his finger against his own cheek, trying to indicate to Wade where the spot is.

“Do you realize who you are speaking with,” Wade asks without asking at all, rubbing his glove against his face. “Have I got red on me?”

“You’re only making it worse,” Peter tells him. Wade isn’t. He’s already gotten it all wiped away.

Wade rubs frantically at his face and Peter laughs, small breaths escaping him, until Wade just rips off Deadpool’s mask and runs its fabric over his skin. When he pulls it away to look at it, it comes back clean of any sauce.

“Shit,” he says. “You’ve pranked me.”

It’s still pretty dark out and Peter can only make out the vague profile of Wade’s head. He beams in its direction.

Maybe it’s the food or the time of day or even the company, because Deadpool seems to be in a good mood, so he laughs. Suddenly they’re sitting very close together, practically thigh-to-thigh, and Wade is staring at Peter’s face. Peter wonders if Wade can see blue reflected back at him through the lenses of Spider-Man’s eyes.

“I bring you shitty pizza and this is how you repay me,” Wade says around a pout of his cracked lips. “I’m gonna call the Daily Bugle and tell them that they’re right and Spider-Man is, in fact, a dick.”

“Don’t bother. Jameson might get so excited that he’ll put you on the payroll to slander me, and trust me that paycheck is  _ not  _ worth it.”

The words tumble easily out of his mouth, and he doesn’t instantly regret them. He brings a glove up to wipe away the sweat gathering on his cheek and Wade is quiet for a handful of careful seconds, processing.

“Is that why I’m always buying the pizza?” Wade asks. Peter’s hands fiddle with the piece of crust between them.

“Yeah,” Peter says with the ghost of a breath. “Um, yeah. Thanks for bringing me nasty food all the time.”

“What can I say, I’m an extremely benevolent dude.”

“Yeah,” Peter says around an ugly snort. “You’re my hero.”

Deadpool’s shoulders twitch momentarily, but then he laughs a breezy laugh. The noise makes Peter’s stomach feel tight, like he’s been punched through the solar plexus. His fingers are now playing against the collar of his suit, trying to allow air in between the 

sticky fabric and warm skin. Wade’s eyes are fixed on his gloved hands.

“You’re a real piece of work, Spidey, you know that?”

“I do,” Peter says around a sharp smile. “Wanna know what you are?” 

“A piece of shit and a homicidal maniac?”

“I was going to say a pal and a confidant.”

Wade shifts in his seat and makes an inhuman kind of high pitched noise,  snapping his gaze from Spider-Man’s gloves to the mask.

“Thank  _ you  _ for being a friend,” he sings. Peter’s eyes trace the splitting grooves of his cheeks as he bellows out the rest of the tune.

His voice is a low, constant hum against the hot summer wind. Wade seems unnecessarily pleased with himself as he sings, and Peter can’t even be annoyed with himself for how endearing he finds it. This is simple. It’s easy. Peter should just let it go, should always just let it go, and stop poking his webbed fingers at the angry, unstable bear. 

But life’s not fair and it shouldn’t be easy, either. Even if it were, Peter thinks easy would just be too boring.

“Are we friends?” He asks, interrupting Wade’s messy vocals. The singing ends abruptly.

“I thought we’ve been over this, Webs,” Wade says with a sigh. “I can take my nasty food elsewhere, if not.”

That’s not exactly what Peter meant, he thinks and scoots even closer to where Deadpool is seated. He puts his hand on top of Wade’s and moves his head toward the skyline. The skyscrapers are small from this far away, spread out like glittering steel matchsticks. His palm is clammy and sweat-slicked under its glove.

“Oh,” Wade says, “ _oh.”_

“Yeah,” Peter says, “oh.”

Wade’s hand squeezes Peter’s, and Peter’s wondering if he’s allowed to kiss pizza grease off the ugliest parts of Wade’s mouth.

He just looks away instead, ripping the crust off another slice, feeling sweat and dirt pooling underneath his mask. It is really, really fucking hot out this morning.

“Hey,” Wade says, clearing his throat, “if I threw a party and invited everyone I knew, what would be in the biggest gift to me from you, other than that card?”

“I dunno,” Peter says, chewing, “probably some guns and a stripper.”

“Really?” Deadpool asks, mouth splitting into a grin.

“No,” Peter answers.

“Harsh, but fair,” Wade says. “I’d definitely get you guns and strippers.”

“The gift that keeps on giving.”

Wade goes off on a tangent about sniper rifles at this point and Peter should tell him off but doesn’t. Instead, he hums and nods, enjoying the fact that he doesn’t have to fill any silences. Maybe Wade’s a nervous talker, or he’s just a talker, but Peter likes the sound of his voice when it’s deep and frantic and excited about anything. All that noise allows Peter to keep his mouth shut for once in his damn life.

Suddenly, the pizza is gone and Peter’s one hand is poking at an empty box and his other is still on Wade’s. The sun is rising, glinting shyly through the gray veil of hot air melting over the city, creating orange and purple shapes against the smog. Wade is telling a story about a job that went wrong— “this was weeks and weeks and  _ weeks  _ ago, Webs, I swear,” —and he’s describing in too vivid detail how creative he had to get with some office supplies.

“I didn’t even kill the guy! But I don’t think he’ll be stalking more girls anytime soon, because I did  _ wreck  _ his Achilles’ tendons with nothing more than a box of thumbtacks and three paper clips. Some of my better work, if you ask me.”

Nodding at the story, Peter feels proud, in the stupidest way. He weaves their fingers together.

“Hey,” he says, reckless as ever, “when’s the last time you killed someone?”

“Uh, dunno,” Wade says, drumming his fingers along his speckled chin, contemplative. “Probably that guy in that warehouse. Y’know. That one night.”

Peter does know. That was months ago. He remembers it too well, the bodies and the screaming, and there’s an apology on the tip of his tongue somewhere,  _ sorry for trying to break your ribs,  _ but the crevices of Wade’s face look forgiving and soft against the morning light.

Wade’s mouth is pressed into a thin line, like he’s waiting for Peter to say something about that night, or the bad guys, or the body count, or any of the other nights that have happened between them in the past year.

It’s getting way too hot out, so Peter just takes off the mask.

There’s a big rush of air behind him, and it could be the wind or it could be Wade, but Peter is looking at the mask in his hands, watching his face move in the reflective lenses. He knows he has the bluest dark circles under his eyes and a huge zit on his chin and he knows his nose is shaped kind of funny from all the times it’s been broken and he hasn’t washed his hair in  _ days _ and his lips are shiny and slick with grease. He can’t help but hyperfixate on all of these things while Wade, shifting layers of scar tissue and all, looks him directly in the eyes for the first time.

It feels weird, but honest. The most honest Peter has felt in a long, long time.

“Wow. Okay,” Wade says, “okay, um, hello…. Man-Man.”

Peter laughs, and he knows his eyes crinkle up when he laughs, and he knows that Wade can see them. He feels his nose scrunch and his forehead wrinkle and hates how perfectly he can feel every cell moving under his skin. This must be how Wade feels all the time.

“The ladies call me Man-Man,” he says, “but you can call me Peter.”

“Peter?”

“Yup.”

Peter’s hands are shaking, just a bit, around the fabric in his grasp. He ate a lot of food very quickly and feels like he might vomit Romeo’s shitty pizza down nine stories.

“Huh, okay. Peter,” Wade says. “ _ Peter.  _ Well, this is all surprisingly anticlimactic. Like you are the most generic, normal, moderately attractive dude I have ever seen, with the most generic, normal dude name.”

Normal is an embarrassingly good way to put it. Peter is kind of scrawny and his face is pale and splotchy from all the time it spends under a mask.

He wonders how Wade feels. This must be so disappointing for him. Spider-Man is really a sad, grimy guy who just decided to do  _ something _ one day and let himself get carried away with it. All of that anonymity is slipping down his shoulders where webbing patterns lay heavy. 

“Boy, Wade,” he eventually responds around a dry throat, feeling like the pizza crust scratched it raw. “You know how to make a girl feel special.”

“No, no, no. Normal is definitely good. Normal is  _ great _ , actually. We like normal. I fucking love normal.”

Wade is staring at Peter with such intense bright eyes, it’s like they’re melting around Peter’s skin and consuming him whole. Peter’s face burns against the attention.

“There is not a normal thing about you, Wilson,” Peter says, trying so hard not to duck his head and mumble the words into his shoulder.

“But that’s why I have you, right?” Wade asks. “Opposites attract, y’know?”

“Well, that’s what Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat have taught me, and Paula Abdul’s never lied to me before.”

“I love you,” Wade breathes out, mouth forming a relaxed o-shape. He blinks twice. “Shit. Fuck.”

It certainly catches Peter by surprise, but so do most of the things that Wade says. They’re staring at one another, eye to eye, and Pete’s face has gone all red.

“Um,” Peter begins. Something that feels like his spider sense, but isn’t, starts firing off in his brain.

“If you say ‘I know,’ we’ll break your jaw,” Wade says, blue eyes narrowing.

Over the past year, Peter has accidentally become obsessed with Deadpool. A heated, angry fixation broke at some point and let something softer bloom in its wake. He finds himself thinking about Wade constantly, always looking out for those red and black shapes when he’s out on patrol. He has a comic strip from the Sunday paper on his coffee table, a bad joke about two angry geese, that he’d put aside to show Wade later.

“I’m sorry,” is what Peter eventually tells him, feeling like his lungs are filling with smoke, “that I’ve been such a dick.”

Peter hopes that, for now, that’s enough. Wade’s face flickers, a rainbow of vivid emotions painting across it, before it falls to neutral. 

“Don’t tell the Daily Bugle,” Peter continues. Wade laughs.

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me,” he promises with a small smile. “But you’ll have to make it worth my while.”

They’re still side by side and Peter wants to be closer so he just moves,  presses their sides together, shoulders aligning with one another. 

“I think something can be arranged,” Peter says, turning his face to breathe onto the skin of Wade’s neck, before he lifts his head and angles it towards the other man’s. Peter’s eyes, muddy brown, fix on Wade’s mouth.

“Is Spider-Man just gonna let me blackmail him like that?”

“I'm not sure,” Peter says, “but I will.”

“Oh,” Wade breathes. “Okay, Peter.”

Before Wade can get through the second syllable of his name, Peter moves forward to kiss him.

Wade’s one hand moves to knot into greasy hair, pulling Peter closer, and the other skates across the outline of his face. The rough texture of his glove traces the wrinkles in Peter’s forehead.

When they pull away and look at each other, Wade’s face is becoming more and more visible against the rising sun. He’s got that ugly, dopey look spread all over him and it makes Peter laugh. Wade always makes Peter laugh.

“Thanks for the pizza,” he says.

“Anything for you,” Wade replies. Peter’s neck feels pink and warm in the summer heat.

“Right back at you, babe.”

“Please don’t ‘babe’ me,” Wade says, scrunching up his face before pressing it into his hands, looking overwhelmed. “That’s lame and gross.”

“Well, I think you’re lame and gross,” Peter parrots back. “So there.”

Wade moves his hands so he can look at Peter like he’s hung the fucking moon they’ve spent so much goddamn time under together.

“No  _ you  _ hang up first,” he says.

Peter shoves at his shoulder, not hard enough to move the solid wall of muscle, but enough to let Wade know that he could, if he wanted to. Wade just smiles at him, eyes squinting against the rising sun.

“You’re such an idiot,” Peter tells him.

“You love it.”

“I tolerate it.”

“Good enough for me,” Wade says. “Maybe we should hang out sometime?”

“Yeah,” Peter says around a grin. His teeth feel very, very crooked right now. “I think we should.”

Wade hums in agreement. He bends his head to rest it on Peter’s shoulder and Peter feels that textured skin press against his own. He looks out over his city and it blinks back at him, shining in the glow of morning light like it’s slicked in the pizza grease that coats Wade’s fingers.


End file.
